Observational learning is a form of social learning in which a demonstrator performs a target task in the company of an observer, who may as a consequence learn something about it. In this study, we approach social learning in terms of the dynamics of coordination rather than the more common perspective of transmission of information. We hypothesised that observers must continuously adjust their visual attention relative to the demonstrator's time-evolving behaviour to benefit from it. We eye-tracked observers repeatedly watching videos showing a demonstrator solving one of three manipulative puzzles before attempting at the task. The presence of the demonstrator's face and the availability of his verbal instruction in the videos were manipulated. We then used recurrence quantification analysis to measure the dynamics of coordination between the overt attention of the observers and the demonstrator's manipulative actions. Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression was applied to examine (1) whether the observers' performance was predicted by such indexes of coordination, (2) how performance changed as they accumulated experience, and (3) if the availability of speech and intentional gaze of the demonstrator mediated it. Results showed that learners better able to coordinate their eye movements with the manipulative actions of the demonstrator had an increasingly higher probability of success in solving the task. The availability of speech was beneficial to learning, whereas the presence of the demonstrator's face was not. We argue that focusing on the dynamics of coordination between individuals may greatly improve understanding of the cognitive processes underlying social learning.

中文翻译：

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演示者-观察者二元组中的注意协调有助于学习并预测新手动任务中的性能。

观察学习是社会学习的一种形式，其中演示者在观察者的陪伴下执行目标任务，因此观察者可能会对此有所了解。在这项研究中，我们根据协调的动态而不是更常见的信息传递视角来处理社会学习。我们假设观察者必须根据演示者随时间变化的行为不断调整他们的视觉注意力才能从中受益。我们通过眼球追踪观察者反复观看视频，该视频显示演示者在尝试执行任务之前解决了三个操纵性难题之一。视频中示威者的面部和口头指示的可用性受到了操纵。然后，我们使用递归量化分析来测量观察者的公开注意力与演示者的操纵行为之间的协调动态。贝叶斯层次逻辑回归用于检查（1）观察者的表现是否可以通过这些协调指标来预测，（2）表现如何随着他们积累经验而变化，以及（3）演示者的讲话和有意凝视是否可用调解它。结果表明，学习者能够更好地协调他们的眼球运动与演示者的操作动作，成功完成任务的概率越来越高。语音的可用性有利于学习，而示威者的脸则不然。