Exploring the Social Foundations of Learning Through

Neuroscience, Technology, and Education Patricia Kuhl, Ph.D.

Director, Science of Learning Center (LIFE) Co-Director, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences

University of Washington, Seattle WA

LIFE: Learning in Informal & Formal Environments

Life-long and Life-wide Learning: Social Foundations of Learning

Life-long, from infancy to adulthood Life-wide, occurring across a wide variety of settings Life-deep, culturally embedded and intertwined with our value systems

Human Social Coordination (e.g., Joint Visual Attention)

Social eye-gaze predicts learning

Teaching robots to follow human gaze Teachers’ social behavior affects learning

Humans learn implicitly from others

Children’s Early Language Learning Requires Social Interaction

Infants learn foreign-language phonemes and words rapidly from live exposure, but no learning occurs when television or audio-only presentation is used Kuhl et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2003

5

Children Can Not Learn Language from a Television

Infants attend to the lights and colors on a television, but they do not learn language from the television presentation Kuhl et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2003

6

Joint Media Engagement   Learning from media is enhanced by social partners  New research examines children’s learning with mentors  How can multimedia positively impact learning?

Language learning from technology? Viewing media with parents and/or mentors

‘Social’ Robots Enhance Learning

Interdisciplinary collaboration of developmentalists and computer scientists

Meltzoff, Rao et al, Neural Networks, 2010

Children in a day-care setting interact with a “social robot”

Translational Research: “Social” Robots Interact Using Language

RUBI the robot behaves “socially” by turning its head towards children, giggling when touched, accepting toys with its pincer, and naming the objects in Finnish using full sentences

Movellan & Kuhl, work in progress

Translational Research Partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

•  Pea is Co-Lead for the Video-Plus Workgroup for “Measures of Teacher Effectiveness”

•  3,300 Grade 4-10 teachers and their students are being video recorded, 4 lessons each year coded and rated, for use in developing measures of effective teaching and for supporting teacher professional development resources for building capacity in school systems

•  DIVER video software from the LIFE Center will identify “the roles of social in learning" from video analysis for use in teacher professional improvement

Designing Advanced Placement (AP) Courses to Increase Social Interaction

Social Belief in “Virtual Other”

 Human vs. Computer –  Science content for 5th grade students –  Students told ‘live’ person vs. computer agent –  Arousal and attention increase for ‘live’ –  Learning improves in ‘live’

 Brain Measures –  Arousal predicts learning –  ‘Live’ improves transfer –  Hippocampus, amygdala, reward system activated in ‘live’ condition

A Learner’s Identity Matters!

Learners as Creators STEM Expertise

Engineering Positioning & Academic Math

13

Bilingual Identity

Brain Measures of Human Social Learning

Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

The Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, 2011

Brain Mechanisms Underlying Social Learning

Listening to language from a person vs. a machine

16

Early Brain Measures to Syllables Predict Language up to 30 Months

Kuhl & Rivera-Gaxiola, Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2008

Early learning environment and brain development

SES is related to brain activation in Broca’s area in 5-year-old children

Broca’s area: Critical for language and social skills

Raizada, Brooks, Meltzoff & Kuhl, NeuroImage, 2008

Social Neuroscience: How Does the ‘Social Brain’ Affect Learning?

Social interaction, socio-cultural identity, and emotion affect human learning

Informing Policymakers: Neuroscience and Education

21

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, tours MEG Facility at I-LABS, July 2010

•  In the U.S., States compete for ‘Race to the Top’ awards •  Goal is to ensure all children succeed in school •  U.S. Deparments of Education and Health & Human Services awarded $60M to the State of Washington in December 2011 •  LIFE/I-LABS brain research was highlighted in the announcement