Learning from others is good, with others is better: the role of social interaction in human acquisition of new knowledge

Abstract

Learning in humans is highly embedded in social interaction: since the very early stages of our lives, we form memories and acquire knowledge about the world from and with others. Yet, within cognitive science and neuroscience, human learning is mainly studied in isolation. The focus of past research in learning has been either exclusively on the learner or (less often) on the teacher, with the primary aim of determining developmental trajectories and/or effective teaching techniques. In fact, social interaction has rarely been explicitly taken as a variable of interest, despite being the medium through which learning occurs, especially in development, but also in adulthood. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging research on social human learning, specifically focusing on cognitive models of how we acquire semantic knowledge from and with others, and include both developmental as well as adult work. We then identify potential cognitive mechanisms that support social learning, and their neural correlates. The aim is to outline key new directions for experiments investigating how knowledge is acquired in its ecological niche, i.e. socially, within the framework of the two-person neuroscience approach. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences’.

Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences

“…De Felice et al [ 66 ] tackle the issue of concept acquisition with others, highlighting the importance of social context for learning in children and adults. The paper is a review of the behavioural and neuroimaging research on social human learning, with an aim to aid the development of novel research methodologies.…”

Using active learning strategies during a quality improvement collaborative: exploring educational games to enhance learning among healthcare professionals

“…LS offers an environment where ‘everyone learns, everyone teaches’ 3 7 8. Conservative strategies such as unidirectional (paternalistic) interaction, exhibitions and classes have been replaced in recent years by more dynamic strategies in which experience, interaction and critical thinking become the central axes of medical education 4 5 9–12.…”

“…‘Learning by doing’ has become a widely used pedagogical tool, mainly in the health area, where different skills and abilities are honed in fictitious scenarios or on a day-to-day basis under the supervision of mentors 13 14. Interaction with peers, discussion and one-on-one coaching can provide a solid foundation for knowledge retention 7 8 11 14. The environment created in LS, in which participants can show their strategies (storyboarding), decisions, plans, problem-solving, and decision-making, creates an ideal environment for exchanging ideas, favouring interactional learning 7 14…”

“…Interaction with peers, discussion and one-on-one coaching can provide a solid foundation for knowledge retention 7 8 11 14. The environment created in LS, in which participants can show their strategies (storyboarding), decisions, plans, problem-solving, and decision-making, creates an ideal environment for exchanging ideas, favouring interactional learning 7 14…”

Understanding Children's Multimodal Conversational Development: Challenges and Opportunities

“…Such an endeavor will eventually allow us to answer crucial, lingering scientific questions about the universals of human linguistic coordination development and their culture-specific instantiation. The fruit of this effort will be highly impactful to many other domains of cognitive development, the most direct being language learning [7,27,26] but also the acquisition of new knowledge more generally [9,4,14]. Further, adopting Machine Learning tools to model child coordination would help translate our accumulated scientific understanding relatively easily into improvement in child-oriented AI [19,33], thus bridging theory and practice.…”