Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Social learning by observation is a topic that really needs no introduction, as we are all constantly engaged in it. The basic skill of learning from looking at each other's actions is widely held as being central to human culture and therefore our minds. It is a key focus of many different disciplines (developmental and social psychology, animal cognition, ...) and even sciences (natural and social sciences, education, arts, ...). I believe the neurosciences will continue to make major contributions to unraveling how social learning from observation actually works at a micro-level. Previous research has focused on the role of action simulation - the mirror neuron system - in understanding the goals and actions of other persons. Having established the importance of our own action plans in action observation, we can use the tools of computational motor control to extend the study of social learning. We will create an innovative setup and run a series of experiments to find out in more detail how we look at the actions of another person. The setup will enable us to control the skill level of the actor and the physical properties of the objects being acted on. We will be able to find out under what conditions people choose to learn primarily about an object (physical learning) or primarily about the actor (social learning in the motor domain). We can do so by measuring their eye movements and reconstruct and analyze their learning strategies and goals from their gaze behavior. We hope this research will ultimately further our understanding of autistic persons. Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by an imbalance of interest in learning about objects rather than people: autistic children may persistently handle a simple object for hours and remain totally oblivious to the emotional state of their caregivers. We would like to contribute to understanding what they learn and why they do not immerse themselves in the social world.