Observation

Observational learning of sensorimotor skills

There has been a recent groundswell of interest in observational learning - the process by which an individual learns a new skill by simply watching someone else do it first. As observational learning is critical for many training environments (e.g., teaching surgical skills to medical students), there is a great incentive to identify what makes people learn the best. Recently, I demonstrated that individuals learn a simple object lifting task more effectively by observing others making mistakes, rather than by observing expert, error-free performance (Buckingham et al., 2013, Cortex). However, it's far from clear exactly what is is about the observation of others' mistakes which is particularly helpful. Furthermore, it's not well understood in which situations errors will be most beneficial - presumably expert models are the best under certain circumstances. Understanding the informational content which drives observational learning will answer fundamental questions about how perception and action are linked at a neural level. Furthermore, improving individuals' ability to learn new skills by observing could lead to reforms in educational practice in environments where trial and error learning is not feasible (e.g., learning surgical techniques) and, at a more fundamental level, could have profound implications for skill learning in clinical rehabilitation contexts.