Dataset Information

Statistical learning in social action contexts.

ABSTRACT: Sensitivity to the regularities and structure contained within sequential, goal-directed actions is an important building block for generating expectations about the actions we observe. Until now, research on statistical learning for actions has solely focused on individual action sequences, but many actions in daily life involve multiple actors in various interaction contexts. The current study is the first to investigate the role of statistical learning in tracking regularities between actions performed by different actors, and whether the social context characterizing their interaction influences learning. That is, are observers more likely to track regularities across actors if they are perceived as acting jointly as opposed to in parallel? We tested adults and toddlers to explore whether social context guides statistical learning and-if so-whether it does so from early in development. In a between-subjects eye-tracking experiment, participants were primed with a social context cue between two actors who either shared a goal of playing together ('Joint' condition) or stated the intention to act alone ('Parallel' condition). In subsequent videos, the actors performed sequential actions in which, for certain action pairs, the first actor's action reliably predicted the second actor's action. We analyzed predictive eye movements to upcoming actions as a measure of learning, and found that both adults and toddlers learned the statistical regularities across actors when their actions caused an effect. Further, adults with high statistical learning performance were sensitive to social context: those who observed actors with a shared goal were more likely to correctly predict upcoming actions. In contrast, there was no effect of social context in the toddler group, regardless of learning performance. These findings shed light on how adults and toddlers perceive statistical regularities across actors depending on the nature of the observed social situation and the resulting effects.

SUBMITTER: Monroy C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5419596 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Statistical learning in social action contexts.

Monroy Claire C Meyer Marlene M Gerson Sarah S Hunnius Sabine S

PloS one 20170505 5

Sensitivity to the regularities and structure contained within sequential, goal-directed actions is an important building block for generating expectations about the actions we observe. Until now, research on statistical learning for actions has solely focused on individual action sequences, but many actions in daily life involve multiple actors in various interaction contexts. The current study is the first to investigate the role of statistical learning in tracking regularities between actions ...[more]

PMID: 28475619

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Project description:BackgroundIndividuals with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) are characterized by atypicalities in social interactions, compared to Typically Developing individuals (TD). The social motivation theory posits that these difficulties stem from diminished anticipation, reception, and/or learning from social rewards. Although learning from socioemotional outcomes is core to the theory, studies to date have been sparse and inconsistent. This possibly arises from a combination of theoretical, methodological and sample-related issues. Here, we assessed participants' ability to develop a spontaneous preference for actions that lead to desirable socioemotional outcomes (approaching/avoiding of happy/angry individuals, respectively), in an ecologically valid social scenario. We expected that learning abilities would be impaired in ASC individuals, particularly in response to affiliative social feedback.MethodWe ran an online social reinforcement learning task, on two large online cohorts with (n = 274) and without (n = 290) ASC, matched for gender, age and education. Participants had to indicate where they would sit in a waiting room. Each seat was associated with different probabilities of approaching/avoiding emotional individuals. Importantly, the task was implicit, as participants were not instructed to learn, and emotional expressions were never mentioned. We applied both categorical analyses contrasting the ASC and TD groups and dimensional factor analysis on affective questionnaires.ResultsContrary to our hypothesis, participants showed spontaneous learning from socioemotional outcomes, regardless of their diagnostic group. Yet, when accounting for dimensional variations in autistic traits, as well as depression and anxiety, two main findings emerged among females who failed to develop explicit learning strategies: (1) autism severity in ASC correlated with reduced learning to approach happy individuals; (2) anxiety-depression severity across both ASC and TD participants correlated with reduced learning to approach/avoid happy/angry individuals, respectively.ConclusionsImplicit spontaneous learning from socioemotional outcomes is not generally impaired in autism but may be specifically associated with autism severity in females with ASC, when they do not have an explicit strategy for adapting to their social environment. Clinical diagnosis and intervention ought to take into account individual differences in their full complexity, including the presence of co-morbid anxiety and depression, when dealing with social atypicalities in autism.

Project description:During the last three decades, thousands of highly qualified social workers who graduated from Romanian universities were employed in the public systems of social work of the European Union. Social group work is studied as a compulsory discipline for undergraduate students. The major focus of our study was the effectiveness of the learning of Social Work Methods with Groups (SWMG) of students, using workshops in a full-time undergraduate program from Romania. We were interested in finding out the perceptions of students about their learning processes and outcomes in the context of teaching the same discipline exclusively in the online medium, due to the pandemic, and in the face-to-face environment via traditional classroom instruction. This study had a mainly quantitative design, covering two academic years between 2018 and 2020 for the two cohorts of social work students. The core analysis was focused on the activities of students at the SWMG laboratories: 50 students in 2020 and 92 students in 2019. Descriptive, inferential statistics and thematic content analysis were applied to two types of deliverables of students: the self-assessment sheet and the group plan. The results of our study showed that training of cognitive and self-awareness skills prevailed among the students who learned online in 2020, while the acquisition of interpersonal skills was reported at a significantly higher level by students who learned in the face-to-face medium in 2019. The students in the traditional classrooms favoured the training of other professional skills, too, like problem-solving skills. However, students who studied exclusively online attributed a significantly greater overall usefulness of SWMG workshops for professional practise than their peers who participated in the face-to-face laboratories. A remarkable result was that more therapeutic and support groups were preferred in the online environment, maybe related to the concerns generated by the pandemic. Remote education forced most students to return to their original places of residence, mostly in the countryside and brought negative psychological effects caused by social isolation due to the pandemic. Remote learning is not the most desirable educational option. Students gain most from blended teaching-learning vehicles: face-to-face and online medium.

Dataset Information

Statistical learning in social action contexts.

Publications

Statistical learning in social action contexts.

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