Making sense of human interaction benefits from communicative cues

Abstract

We investigated whether communicative cues help observers to make sense of human interaction. We recorded EEG from an observer monitoring two individuals who were occasionally communicating with each other via either mutual eye contact and/or pointing gestures, and then jointly attending to the same object or attending to different objects that were placed on a table in front of them. The analyses were focussed on the processing of the interaction outcome (i.e. presence or absence of joint attention) and showed that its interpretation is a two-stage process, as reflected in the N300 and the N400 potentials. The N300 amplitude was reduced when the two individuals shared their focus of attention, which indicates the operation of a cognitive process that involves the relatively fast identification and evaluation of actor–object relationships. On the other hand, the N400 was insensitive to the sharing or distribution of the two individuals’ attentional focus. Interestingly, the N400 was reduced when the interaction outcome was preceded either by mutual eye contact or by a perceived pointing gesture. This shows that observation of communication “opens up” the mind to a wider range of action possibilities and thereby helps to interpret unusual outcomes of social interactions.

Social interaction is a catalyst for adult human learning in online contexts

“…These forms of social learning mainly differ on the basis of social contingency, that is, the bi-directional exchange during an interaction between two or more people, where each person can initiate an action and/or directly react to their partner (mutual feedback). Contingent interactions are cognitively demanding 11 and could impact on learning in different ways. Interaction might impair learning by increasing cognitive load and/or fear of being evaluated poorly by the interlocutor.…”

“…As with social contingency, the relationship between social richness and learning could go in either direction. Rich social features could increase cognitive load 11,26 and/or distract learners. 17 Alternatively, social cues, such as eye-gaze 18 and gestures of a teacher, 27 could benefit learning by facilitating the coordination and ''attunement'' between student and teacher 28 via mechanisms of joint attention and social engagement.…”

“…In this observational learning, the learner is passively decoding an interaction between two external actors. Previous studies suggest that being an observer of a social interaction is more cognitively demanding than actively engaging in that interaction 11 and social cues may become distracting. [12][13][14] In our study, the fact that, during the recorded videos, participants were presented with the view of another participant as well as the teacher could have possibly contributed to diverge attention away from the learning material, making it a possible explanation for worse learning performance in this condition.…”

Perception and Action in a Social Context

“…More recent work suggests that communicative cues might help us understand other aspects of interactions. For example, neural markers that indicate the complexity involved in understanding a scenario are less pronounced when participants see a dyad communicate before acting (Kourtis et al, 2020). Others' communicative cues might therefore help us make sense of their subsequent actions.…”

Social Interaction is a Catalyst for Adult Human Learning in Online Contexts

“…Live social interaction with a full view of the teacher's face provided the optimal setting for learning new factual information. However during observational learning, social cues may be more cognitively demanding 15 and/or distracting [16][17][18] , resulting in less learning from rich social information if there is no interactivity. We suggest that being part of a genuine social interaction catalyses learning, possibly via mechanisms of joint attention 11 , common ground 12 or (inter)-active discussion, and as such, interactive learning benefits from rich social settings 13,14 .…”