Alexandr Ten

University of Tuebingen | EKU Tübingen

Humans constantly search for and use information to solve a wide range of problems related to survival, social interactions, and learning. While it is clear that curiosity and the drive for knowledge occupies a central role in defining what being human means to ourselves, where does this desire to know the unknown come from? What is its purpose? An...

Intrinsic motivation – the desire to do things for their inherent joy and pleasure – has received its first share of scientific attention over 70years ago, ever since we saw monkeys solving puzzles for free. Since then, research on intrinsic motivation has been steadily gaining momentum. We have come to understand, in the context of learning and di...

Curiosity-driven learning is foundational to human cognition. By enabling humans to autonomously decide when and what to learn, curiosity has been argued to be crucial for self-organizing temporally extended learning curricula. However, the mechanisms driving people to set intrinsic goals, when they are free to explore multiple learning activities,...

Intrinsically motivated information-seeking, also called curiosity-driven exploration, is widely believed to be a key ingredient for autonomous learning in the real world. Such forms of spontaneous exploration have been studied in multiple independent lines of computational research, producing a diverse range of algorithmic models that capture diff...

Despite their apparent importance for the acquisition of full-fledged human intelligence, mechanisms of intrinsically motivated autonomous learning are poorly understood. How do humans identify useful sources of knowledge and decide which learning situations to approach in the absence of external rewards? While the recognition of this important pro...

Despite their apparent importance for the acquisition of full-fledged human intelligence, mechanisms of intrinsically motivated autonomous learning are poorly understood. How do humans identify useful sources of knowledge and decide which learning situations to approach in the absence of external rewards? While the recognition of this important pro...

Curiosity-driven learning is foundational to human cognition. By enabling humans to autonomously decide when and what to learn, curiosity has been argued to be crucial for self-organizing temporally extended learning curricula. However, the mechanisms driving people to set intrinsic goals, when they are free to explore multiple learning activities,...

Curiosity-driven learning is foundational to human cognition. Byenabling humans to autonomously decide when and what to learn,curiosity has been argued to be crucial for self-organizing temporally extended learning curricula. However, the mechanisms drivingpeople to set intrinsic goals, when they are free to explore multiplelearning activities, are...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have implemented a wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Monitoring and documenting government strategies during the COVID-19 crisis is crucial to understand the progression of the epidemic. Following a content analysis strategy of existing public information sources, we developed a...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have implemented a wide range of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Monitoring and documenting government strategies during the COVID-19 crisis is crucial to understand the progression of the epidemic. Following a content analysis strategy of existing public information sources, we developed a...