Episode 16: Don't Learn Alone—How Real-Time Connection Supercharges Your Brain with Dr. Sara De Felice

Key Topics & Takeaways:

• Learning in a Social Context:
  • Social vs. Solo Learning: Understand the critical differences between learning “from” others (e.g., recorded lectures) and learning “with” others (live, interactive sessions), and why the latter can boost retention and engagement. 
  • The Role of Joint Attention: Learn how simultaneous focus (e.g., both teacher and learner attending to the same object or idea) enhances brain synchrony and memory consolidation. 
• Theoretical Perspectives:
  • Operant Conditioning vs. Social Cognitive Theory: Explore how traditional action-consequence learning compares with social cognitive approaches where observation, anticipation, and modeling play key roles. 
  • Interactivity’s Hidden Benefits: Discover how even subtle non-verbal cues (like eye contact and nodding) facilitate dynamic, real-time adjustments during teaching and learning. 
• Neuroscience of Social Interaction:
  • Key Brain Regions: Insights into the medial dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the temporal parietal junction—the hubs of our “social brain” that process shared attention and perspective-taking. 
  • Hyperscanning Techniques: An introduction to how neuroscientists measure simultaneous brain activity in interacting individuals to better understand live social learning. 
• Implications for Education and the Workplace:
  • Enhancing Learning Environments: Discussion on the growing trend toward interactive and collaborative learning—both in academia and corporate training—and how these approaches can lead to improved outcomes. 
  • Future Research Directions: A look ahead at how further study into the quality of social interactions (e.g., the impact of relationship dynamics on learning) could reshape our understanding of education and organizational behavior. 

Guest Information & Resources:

Dr. Sara De Felice

• Position: Research Associate, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge 
• Research Interests: Cognitive and neural mechanisms of human learning, social interaction, and the use of multi-modal approaches (including hyperscanning) to study interacting brains. 

Connect with Sara:

• Google Scholar: Sara De Felice
• Twitter: @sara_de_felice
• LinkedIn: Sara De Felice
• University Profile: Sara De Felice – University of Cambridge

Key Publication:

• Article: “Learning from others is good, with others is better: the role of social interaction in human acquisition of new knowledge” 
  • Citation: De Felice S, Hamilton AFC, Ponari M, Vigliocco G. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2023 Feb 13;378(1870):20210357. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0357. 
  • PubMed: Link

Transcript

We live in a reality that is shared, and as such it might be really important to continue to co-construct that reality together to find common ground about how we understand the world around us.

Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox. I'm your host, Travis Mallet, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this journey of continuous learning and growth as we navigate the dynamic world of management.

Now, this isn't your typical management podcast. Yes, there are plenty of resources out there that will give you the ABCs of how to run a meeting, hire someone, or even how to fake a sick day without getting caught. But here, we like to talk about the behind-the-scenes topics—those concepts and ideas that transcend specific management practices rather than simply restate them.

We aren't going to give you specific tips and tricks for becoming an effective manager. Here at the Management Theory Toolbox, we're interested in the why behind it all—the discoveries of behavioral science, psychology, business, and economics that open our eyes to what's happening behind the scenes.

To kick off our next topic, let's consider: What is the sound of one hand clapping? What's that, you say? Starting off with a philosophical tangent? Well, I don't mind if I do. In Zen Buddhism, the sound of one hand clapping is a famous koan—a kind of paradoxical riddle or teaching story used to provoke deep insight.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? It's a question that doesn't make sense. Clapping requires two hands. Asking about the sound of one hand clapping forces us to question how we perceive and define phenomena. It suggests that there may be aspects of our perception of reality that are incomplete, perhaps even illogical.

Now, there's no correct answer to this koan. In fact, one reason I like it is because it serves as an invitation to look beyond the surface of our thought. Over the past seven episodes or so, we've been talking about learning in an organizational context. We've explored several aspects—from psychology, and especially focused on operant conditioning, which is how our environment, the structures within which we act, and the consequences of our actions, both good and bad, affect our behavior in the future.

But are we missing something? Is this all—just the sound of one hand clapping? After all, organizations are inherently social environments. So, how do social interactions affect the learning process of our employees? In contrast to operant conditioning, which emphasizes learning from direct consequences, social cognitive theory posits that people can also learn by anticipating outcomes and modeling others.

In this view, mental processing and forethought allow individuals to simulate scenarios based on past experiences or observation, rather than relying solely on direct experience. We talked a bit about this in episode 12 with Dr. Richard Mallott when he brought up the consequence of not wearing seatbelts.

I remember one time as a college student several years ago, driving to class. It was one of those chilly fall days that makes you think that winter's pretty much already arrived. Feeling cold, I turned up the heat in my 1989 Toyota Corolla—you know, the classic, light blue, boxy design with a hatchback. I apparently wasn't paying attention, because when I looked up from adjusting the heat sliders, I was fast approaching a sharp right-hand curve and about to go off the road.

I yanked the steering wheel right—overcorrecting—causing me to swerve too far toward the other side of the road. Yanked left, yanked right, slammed on the brakes. Now, thanks to the low center of gravity of the Corolla, it didn't flip over, which it totally could have. But instead, it skidded as it did a 360 in the middle of the road and screeched to a halt.

Fortunately, there weren't any other cars around, but I had skidded into the oncoming traffic lane. And I couldn't help but think about how it could have turned out differently if there had been another car coming around that corner.

As you can imagine, my heart was racing, my hands shaking from the adrenaline rush as I carefully started forward again on my way to class. But this time, with my eyes glued to the road. And guess what? Ever since then, I've been extremely careful about letting my eyes wander from the road due to that experience.

Now that's operant conditioning. That's what we've been talking about in the past several episodes: action, consequence, behavior modified.

Social Cognitive Theory is a bit more abstract. Returning to the seatbelts example, I wear my seatbelt religiously—not because I've ever experienced a car accident where a seatbelt saved my life, but because I can imagine or simulate in my mind what may happen in a crash without a seatbelt. Society tells me to wear a seatbelt, so I also model others.

I've seen videos and movies of car crashes. I've taken a physics class. I have a rudimentary understanding of the conservation of momentum and the effect of inertia. All of these pieces of information coalesce into an ability to simulate the likelihood of potential outcomes. So that's part of what social cognitive theory talks about: the ability to anticipate outcomes and model others.

But there's a third aspect of learning that we haven't yet discussed: the effects of social interaction itself on the learning process. We can talk about operant conditioning or social cognitive theory all we want, but if we ignore how social interaction affects learning, then our discussion of learning in organizational settings is probably just the sound of one hand clapping.

We found out just how important the social environment is for students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when young people were told to stay at home, it was much harder to check up on just how they were doing. Schools were shut to most children, exams canceled. Now, new research by the Social Mobility Foundation has found that half of disadvantaged children fear they won't get the grades they deserve.

A decade of progress closing the gap with their more privileged peers is now at risk. Schools across the country—from kindergarten through university—closed in March and transitioned to online learning a month later. Because of the pandemic, an article in the Wall Street Journal takes a look at how it went and reports that results are in for remote learning.

It didn't work for America's children this pandemic, and what's happening in our schools from New York to Texas to Minnesota: what we found tonight in some places included failing grades, growing concern over students falling behind, and we asked what can be done. We know that they are falling behind at rates that we are not satisfied with. We are not happy with it. It breaks our hearts.

Open our schools to parents demanding schools open in Tennessee. Coast-to-coast, school districts are showing rising numbers of students with failing grades. In Houston, 42 percent of students received at least one F in the first grading period of the year, and in St. Paul, Minnesota, nearly 40 percent of grades for high school students were F's—double the amount in a typical year.

Clearly, social environments are crucial for learning. And of course, much has been said and studied on the topic for children. But does any of this translate to implications for adults in organizations? To find out, we have with us Dr. Sara De Felice, a research associate at the University of Cambridge.

Her work aims at understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of human learning as it occurs in the real world, especially in the context of social interactions—that is, how people learn from and with others. Hi, Sara, and welcome to the show.

Hi, Travis. Thank you very much for having me.

Thanks so much for joining us.

So before we get started, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and your work.

Yes, sure. So I'm Sara De Felice. I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. I'm currently working as a research associate at the University of Cambridge. I'm based in the Department of Psychology, where I work in the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group, which is led by Professor Blackmore.

Before that, I studied in different cities, mainly between London and Paris, and I completed my PhD in London at UCL (University College London). I'm particularly interested in studying social interaction in humans, and especially those interactions where we learn from and with each other. For example, in school or with colleagues at work. My research uses neuroimaging and cognitive tests to understand the brain and behavioral mechanisms of social cognition during learning. I'm really excited to be here talking with you today. Thanks.

Excellent. And thank you so much for joining us today.

I'm really excited to talk to you. So in today's episode, we're exploring the idea of social learning. And as I understand it, much of the research about learning has studied how humans learn in isolation but ignores the impact of social interaction on learning. Can you tell us a bit about what we know about the effect of social interaction in adult human learning?

So, you are right. There is not a lot of research on adult learning in a social context. Some studies have considered it, and they show that when learning, for example, a second language, it is more efficient when we learn in interaction with someone else. But there are a few pressing questions that actually remain unanswered.

First of all, as you mentioned, the majority of studies look at learning in isolation. What that means is that they just focus on the learner and do not consider the interaction that exists—in terms of behavior and brain dynamics—between a teacher and a learner, which evolves naturally over time during conversation.

So, in other words, these studies completely ignore everything else, including the teacher, and just focus on the learner's performance. And we believe that that's kind of a pity because that interaction is rich with information to actually understand how adult learning works. Also, there's another thing to consider: those studies that look at adult learning mainly examine learning a second language.

Now, language is social per se. We use language to communicate with others, and language is actually one of the main ways in which we are social. So the fact that learning a second language—or language in a social context—is better than learning it alone is trivial; it seems to make sense. What we don't know is whether social interaction helps to learn things that are not social.

For example, things that you've learned at school or that you can hear in a documentary, or the content of a business plan in a company. So, intuitively, one might feel that reading that information alone or watching a video explaining those things wouldn't really make a difference compared to, for example, hearing about those same things live from a real person.

But actually it does—it does make a difference. We demonstrated this in a series of studies that we conducted with Professor Anthony Hamilton at UCL. These studies were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic on over a hundred adults, and in those studies, we asked people to learn about exotic animals, ancient objects, musical instruments—and we asked them to learn about these things from recorded videos or from a live teacher.

Then, a week later, we asked what they could remember, and we found that participants could recall significantly more when these things were taught by a live teacher.

We also know quite little about how social learning translates into brain systems. So neuroscience for decades has almost ignored the importance of social interaction as part of the environment within which we as humans think and behave in our everyday life.

For a long time, different cognitive systems and processes have been studied in isolation. For example, if one was interested in learning in particular, in a classical study, they would invite people into the lab and ask them to memorize a list of words from a computer screen. Now, while this has helped us a lot in understanding how memory consolidates over time in the brain, it's not really how things work in the real world.

We are embedded in a social world all the time, and studying how learning happens at the brain level during social interaction is particularly important if we want to really grasp how we learn as humans.

So, a follow-up question: you mentioned that live teacher instruction is more effective. Now that many interactions—like this podcast, for example, and online classes—are remote, do we know if virtual learning is as effective as in person?

From what I'm aware of, there are no studies that directly compare learning in real time, in real space (i.e., physical presence), compared to virtual presence. There are studies that show that social interaction—in terms of brain mechanisms—is different, and also, physiologically, there are differences that arise from physical co-presence compared to virtual presence.

How that translates to learning is still kind of unexplored, but there is definitely some background research in the field of social cognition in general and in social neuroscience to actually be worth asking the question.

So it seems that we should focus on what happens in the brain during social learning and how different environments affect it.

What do we know about that process?

So, yes, we're trying to figure that out. Maybe you can come back to me with this question in 30 years' time and I will know a bit more, hopefully. But from what we know so far, I can tell you that there are specific brain areas that get particularly active during social interaction. Typically, the medial dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—which is right at the front of your head, just above your eyes—is one such area. And then there's the temporal-parietal junction, which is located a bit behind and above your ears.

Now, these areas have been shown to be important for things like reasoning, paying attention to specific things in the environment, focusing, and also understanding other people's perspectives, intentions, and how they feel. These regions form the theory-of-mind brain network, or the so-called social brain, which we know is important for processing information about the social world or for putting yourself into someone else's shoes. These regions are likely to be active during social learning, but this is all happening within just one brain.

So, obviously, by definition, in social learning there are at least two people who are part of the interaction. What I'm interested in is what happens between multiple brains as they interact. So, in the case of learning, there is at least one teacher and one learner. The learner and teacher share the same environment, and hopefully, they are attending to the same conversation.

So this means that at the brain level, there will be some regions in both the teacher's and the learner's brains that will have some overlap in their brain activity because they are doing the same thing. However, because the teacher and the learner play different roles by definition, their brains will also be busy doing slightly different things.

For example, the teacher might activate regions that are involved in speech and planning, while the learner would try to memorize facts and possibly decide when to interrupt to ask questions or nod to signal that they are understanding and following. So you can see how much more complicated it becomes to study these things in the real world when you're actually considering the complexity of the dynamics that unfold during natural social interaction.

There is actually a new, exciting field of study that is emerging, where neuroscientists (including me) are trying to look at what happens between brains during social learning using a technique called hyperscanning. So hyperscanning is a way of measuring brain activity simultaneously from multiple brains to link the brain activity of the teacher to that of the learner and try to infer what defines successful social interaction—and ultimately, use that to predict learning.

Now, how does social learning evolve from childhood to adulthood, and what implications does that have for lifelong learning and education?

That's an important question, actually, because in research there has been disproportionately more attention towards social learning in children, but not so much on learning in adults.

We know a lot more about what happens during childhood in terms of learning, including from other disciplines that are close to human neuroscience, such as anthropology, sociology, and even developmental psychology. This work has emphasized the importance of social interaction for child development for many decades over the last century.

And this makes sense because, compared to other species, humans need extensive care for survival for many years after birth. So babies have literally no other way of learning except from others. It is almost impossible to neglect the social aspects of development in babies and children, which is probably why it's been—and continues to be—studied so much.

We have extensive evidence showing that social interaction is crucial for learning to speak, to use gestures, and to understand facial expressions—specifically during our first years of life. And again, this kind of makes sense because learning to communicate socially might be fundamental in the first years of life, as we are highly dependent on our caregivers.

As adults, this might be less important because we are more independent. We are perfectly fine learning new things and new skills from reading alone, and we don't really need others, technically, to learn new things. Now the question becomes: does social interaction boost the acquisition of new knowledge in adults beyond what is possible by other non-social methods? And if so, why?

So it's interesting to observe that interactivity is still a very attractive feature in many learning environments. We have the technology to move all our learning to be non-social—you know, we could move all our learning to happen without human teachers. And still, we go to schools; we go to university to attend classes. We listen to podcasts like this one, where two people are talking to each other. We watch the news, where there are different interlocutors who exchange ideas and discuss different topics. Also, think about the COVID-19 pandemic: there was a sense of urgency to go back to schools and repopulate office spaces and social networks.

Now, obviously, yes, there are many other additional reasons why we wanted to go back to social environments. But one reason for this might have been that many of us felt the loss in our personal and career development, and the challenges associated with doing things and learning things on our own. What we want to understand as scientists is why—what are the mechanisms that support this?

And then the challenge is to model these different types of interactive learning to understand which different mechanisms at the physiological, behavioral, and neural levels are responsible for improving our learning when it is done with other people. So I believe this could actually reveal some fundamental aspects of how the human brain and cognition work and add small but significant pieces to the big questions of why humans are so distinctively social.

You make a distinction between learning from others and learning with others. Can you tell us what's the difference and why that distinction is important?

Yes. So in my work, this distinction is crucial, and the reason is that these different types of learning are likely to mean different things for our brain and cognition.

So, first, let's say that we call social learning any type of learning that happens when the learner receives information from another person. Now, this other person can either be present in real time—either physically, by being in the same room, or remotely over Zoom. They could record a video, which is later watched by the learner in their own time. So imagine, for example, all the YouTube tutorials with people showing how to do stuff. So when the learner and the teacher are both present, that's what we call learning with others. In a YouTube video, for example, we say that learning is occurring from others, as the student is hearing information from a video or from a podcast, but the teacher is not there with them.

So both these examples involve some sort of social learning because there is another person there giving information. But in the YouTube video example, the learning is by observation, not by interaction. So this is the crucial difference here. These two situations—learning from a video or learning in live interaction with someone—differ in that only in the real-time one can the learner interact with the teacher, who can then respond, generating a unique and novel exchange that is not possible when someone is just watching a recorded video or listening to a recorded podcast.

So interactive situations are processed very differently by our brain and body. When we interact live with someone—even when our job is just that of listening (and we might not even be that vocal, for example, when we attend a lecture in a big lecture theatre)—there is still a series of cognitive and physiological processes that switch on. A student or learner might be listening in a live class; they might be listening and then decide whether or not to raise their hand, or they might start thinking about what the others in the class are thinking. These processes are not really happening when we learn from others in the sense of learning from a recorded video, for example.

Even more, learning with others is very different from learning from others—not only for the learner, but also for the teacher, who can adapt in real time by picking up on signals from the learner and modulating their lesson accordingly. This happens almost automatically and does not even require extensive interactions. Even a small nod from the learner or eye contact is enough to alter the teacher-learner dynamic and, in turn, adapt and calibrate their teaching—for example, speaking louder if students seem distracted, clarifying things if they are confused, or speeding things up if students look bored. This online adaptation is something that does not happen in a situation where learning takes place by observation.

And we think that this online updating might actually translate into information being transferred more efficiently between teacher and learner when they learn with one another, because live interaction allows this calibration to happen and makes learning more efficient. Our brain can pick these small signals up and might use them to co-construct knowledge that is tailored to the specific situation and, in turn, consolidate memory more easily.

Another possibility is that we enjoy being social. So there are specific hormones—for example, oxytocin, which is the most famous one—that are released during social interaction and are rewarding for our brain. Associating certain information with a rewarding signal might help us memorize things better and ultimately learn better.

These different explanations might not be exclusive, so it might be that we are both more efficient in exchanging information live and also enjoy that more. These different mechanisms might actually coexist and work together in tandem to produce the effect that we see.

Now, have you seen a shift towards more interactive and collaborative learning environments in academia, especially since the pandemic, similar to the changes happening in the workplace?

Generally, I would say yes, although the more we move forward—especially, I felt this being within the university environment, supervising students, attending courses, and teaching in some of these courses—I can really see that, especially after the pandemic, there has been a great encouragement toward creating much more interactive learning environments, even in academia. And even within that, there are specific universities; in Cambridge, for example, they are employing a much more interactive approach. They have this very specific system in which students have to meet with supervisors in groups of three or four every week—or maybe twice a week for every single course they do—to discuss what has been presented to them in lectures. So to actually create and stimulate that kind of exchange.

So, yes, probably in a work environment there is more encouragement to exchange ideas with colleagues, but I can see that it's kind of going in that direction in academia as well.

That makes sense. And I think that leads us right into our next question: How does the quality and the nature of the social interactions—especially between the learner and the teacher—influence the effectiveness of learning?

Yes, we know that when two people interact in any form of social interaction, their behavioral and brain dynamics change depending on whether the two have a relationship—for example, if they're friends, if they are romantic partners, or child and parent—compared to complete strangers. Other things that might play a role are the quality of the relationship, how close they feel to each other, and how long they've known each other.

How this translates into the learner-teacher dynamic specifically is less clear. There isn't much research on this specifically. It is also possible that a stronger relationship between learner and teacher—which may be built over many years, as in the case of schools, for example—might modulate the effects that we observe in the learner-teacher interaction.

Another thing to consider would be whether the level of perceived authority makes a difference—how much or how well, or even how badly, I think of my teacher. So, I might trust someone a lot and therefore learn a lot from them, or I might feel intimidated and that would result in less learning, less engagement. We don't really know much about this, but we should—it's very important. In relation to this, I'm currently planning a study in Cambridge with Professor Blackmore to study how these dynamics change during, for example, peer learning in adolescence specifically. Now, why is this interesting? Because adolescence is a very sensitive period for brain development and cognition, and it is specifically sensitive to peer influence. So someone of one's own age—in that sense, adolescence is actually a really cool age group to study when there is an effect in the quality of the learner-teacher interaction and ultimately how that translates into memory consolidation and learning.

There is also another stream of research that, instead of looking at the big picture of the relationship quality, is looking at what happens in the moment-by-moment instances that make up a real-time interaction. So we're currently working on a big study, which is giving us some interesting preliminary results. We found that the highest learning occurs when the teacher and the learner pay attention to the same thing at the same time—by looking at the same object. We actually measured their eye gaze behavior and tracked when they were looking at the same object at the same time. What it's called is that during those instances of what we call joint attention, we see that the brain activity is also more aligned, or more in synchrony. These types of dynamics between people—across different levels of data, such as brain and behavior—are really complex to study, but we think they are actually very rich in terms of information about how humans interact and learn with others in everyday life.

That's very interesting. So, in what ways can the insights from your research on social interaction and learning be applied, especially in an organizational setting, to enhance the teaching and learning outcomes for employees?

We can certainly say that interacting with others has many benefits—including learning—and so we should encourage that in the workplace as well. After the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home is more and more common, and everybody sees the benefit of it; there are certainly many benefits for the quality of life. However, we should be careful not to underestimate the long-term effect of social interaction on productivity in the workplace.

Beyond all the other issues related to loneliness and mental health, the effect of social interaction in learning new knowledge and skills might be substantial, in fact. And even when this is not clearly visible—as it is for child development—simply because, as adults, we might find alternative strategies or ways to compensate for the lack of social interaction during learning. But that doesn't really mean that social interaction is not important for adult learning.

After all, we live in a reality that is shared, and as such, it might be really important to continue to co-construct that reality together to find common ground about how we understand the world around us.

Thank you.

And this was really fascinating. Before we sign off, can you tell our listeners how they can find you and your work?

You can find me on the University of Cambridge Department of Psychology website directory. Also, they have a Cambridge Neuroscience virtual platform on which you can find me. I also have a Google Scholar page where you can read a bit more about my research. And you can always directly contact me on Twitter or Mastodon—you can easily find me by my full name. I'd love to hear from you, connect with you all, and hear about any different insights. Thanks for having me on again.

Thank you.

Wow. That was fascinating. I think, for me, I got two main takeaways from the interview with Dr. Sara De Felice. First, live interactive learning isn't just about receiving information—it's about the dynamic brain-to-brain connection that happens when teachers and learners share the moment. That joint attention and immediate feedback can make a huge difference in how well we learn and remember.

Second, even as more learning moves online, these social dynamics still remain essential. Whether in the classroom or the workplace, real-time interaction can boost understanding and engagement in ways that passive video content simply can't match.

This week, consider how social or collaborative learning techniques can be applied in your workplace. Are your training methods designed to maximize the neural benefits of social learning? Think about how you could improve your meetings, training sessions, and overall learning initiatives to foster more engaging, interactive environments.

So, with that, thank you for joining us on another episode of the Management Theory Toolbox. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we discuss employee-generated learning and talk about how learning can be more nimble, flexible, and up-to-date if our employees are involved in the process. Until then, keep learning, keep growing, and keep adding to your management theory toolbox.