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How does curiosity unfold during reading? Although curiosity is central to how people seek out and engage with information, its role in everyday reading remains underexplored. In this study, we adapted the classic trivia paradigm to a naturalistic reading task: participants read 72 short, thematically diverse German texts from different domains and rated them on seven dimensions, including curiosity and prior knowledge (before reading), interest, desire to know more, perceived complexity, novelty, and surprise (after reading). An exploratory factor analysis revealed two key latent factors in the ratings explaining 56% of the variance in the data: curiosity (encompassing curiosity, desire to learn more, and interest) and novelty (including novelty and surprise). Variance partitioning showed that curiosity varied by participant, domain, and text. Remarkably, strong participant–domain and participant–text interactions emerged, highlighting systematic individual differences in readers’ domain and text-topic engagement. These differences were less pronounced for novelty. Finally, using linear mixed-effects models, we found that participants reported greater curiosity for topics at moderate levels of complexity and individual prior knowledge, supporting an inverted U-shaped relationship, consistent with complexity-based theories. Conversely, interest increased linearly with novelty, supporting novelty-based theories. Higher curiosity was associated with lower reading fluency (based on text reading times), while prior knowledge improved fluency, suggesting an interplay between engagement and efficiency. Together, these results highlight the multifaceted nature of curiosity, differentially influenced by both stimulus features and individual differences, as well as by their interactions.
