Just how it is focussed isn't obvious. As mentioned above, being curious about and developing an interest in new things is a valuable asset to aid learning. I would suggest that as a human or, to some extent an animal, develops an understanding of the world and associates different wants and emotions to objects and situations in the world, curiosity becomes focussed around the subjects of more favourable emotion. If someone develops a passion for Artificial Intelligence, for example, that person will want do discover more about the field and will be led by such an emotion to persue such investigation. Again, the idea of inherited knowledge is an important aid to accelerated knowledge aquisition, more so in humans where recorded knowledge can be aquired without first-hand experience.
Communities tend to develop popular opinions or emotions about certain subjects.
Such consensus emotion leads to conventional actions or reactions regarding those subjects. Such conventions are adopted without first-hand experience, or at least used as a basis for developing personal feeling towards the subject. Curiosity too could possibly be led by emotion. A simplistic example would be a person researching artificial intelligence because of an enjoyment of the field. The main point I wish to make in this discourse is that I believe that emotion comes from having goals to achieve and reacting to the process of achieving or trying to achieve those goals.