Source Curiosity
A user's move to trace the origin or grounding of an AI-generated statement - asking where a claim comes from or on what it is based. The referent is the discrete provenance-seeking act during interaction.
Operational Definition
EVENT. One occurrence is recorded when a user issues a request for the source, basis, or evidence behind an AI statement (e.g. 'what is the source', 'how do you know that', 'cite that'). The observable marker is a provenance- or evidence-seeking turn directed at a preceding AI claim.
Measurement Schema
Proposed measurement protocol (not yet empirically validated): Provenance-request coding: conversation turns are annotated for source/evidence-seeking moves by two coders; could be reported as provenance requests per 100 turns and the proportion of factual AI claims that are followed by such a request (a verification-engagement rate). Coder agreement would be assessed via Cohen's kappa; optional intent classifier validated against labels (precision/recall, F1).