De Felice, Sara; (2023) Neural and Cognitive Mechanisms of Real-World Interaction during Adult Learning. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to understand what makes a social interaction successful, and whether it supports learning of conceptual knowledge. Crucially, it distinguishes learning via the social from learning about the social, and asks the question of how social interaction supports declarative processing of non-social material. In doing so, it priorities ecological validity: all experiments involve relatively unconstrained teacher-learner interaction, and learning material resembled documentary-like content. The first half of the thesis shows a series of studies on how adults learn in online contexts (Study 1 and 2): Study 1 presents two online experiments, where social contingency (i.e. being part of a live interaction vs observing a pre-recorded one) and social cues (i.e. teacher’s webcam on vs off vs showing a slide only) were manipulated. Results showed that learning in live interaction was associated with the best performance, and live social interaction with a full view of the teacher provided the optimal setting for learning, while seeing a slide had greater benefit during recorded sessions specifically. Study 2 replicates the live-learning advantage across three experiments and a large sample of adults with Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC). The second half of this thesis (Study 3 and 4) investigates face-to-face interaction, using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning and wavelet transform coherence (WTC) analysis, to measure brain synchrony in naturalistic interactions. Study 3 tests the hypothesis that being in the same room and engaging in conversation affects people’s brain response to later novel stimuli. Study 4 asks whether teacher-student brain synchrony can be a marker of learning success and, if so, how it is modulated by social behaviours. Findings reveal a complex dynamic between neural responses and behavioural metrics, in particular mutual gaze and joint attention. Results are discussed in the frame of the mutual-prediction hypothesis, and advocate for a multi-modal investigation of social learning to fully understand its underlying cognitive mechanisms. Overall, this work advances the current understanding of naturalistic social interaction and has theoretical implications for cognitive models of information exchange and mutual prediction, as well as practical significance for educational policies. The novel multi-modal and highly ecological approach used in this thesis makes this work an important example for real-world second person social neuroscience.

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