# What killed the cat? Towards a logical formalization of curiosity (and suspense, and surprise) in narratives

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08597 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08597/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Answer Set Planning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05793/) (2022)
- [Twist your logic with TouIST](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.03663/) (2015)
- [Belief revision and incongruity: is it a joke?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02009/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We provide a unified framework in which the three emotions at the heart of narrative tension (curiosity, suspense and surprise) are formalized. This framework is built on nonmonotonic reasoning which allows us to compactly represent the default behavior of the world and to simulate the affective evolution of an agent receiving a story. After formalizing the notions of awareness, curiosity, surprise and suspense, we explore the properties induced by our definitions and study the computational complexity of detecting them. We finally propose means to evaluate these emotions' intensity for a given agent listening to a story.