How do we humans learn from one another?
The ability to learn from others can provide the learner with access to vast stores of knowledge about both the social and the nonsocial world that would otherwise be difficult, slow, or impossible to acquire solely first-hand. It is liberation from the tyranny of individual experience.
We achieve this remarkable feat even though the contents of another person's mind are perceptually inaccessible. Although we cannot directly see or touch another person's knowledge, goals, or beliefs, we have sophisticated systems for transmitting and extracting this information from the available sense data: through our faces, through our actions, and even through invented technologies like drawing and writing.
Preparedness and plasticity
The goal of my research is to understand the tools we use to analyze social perceptual information and that ultimately underlie our ability to learn from one another. I currently organize these studies along two themes: (1) what helps prepare us to plug into human society right at the beginning of life, laying the foundation in infancy for more sophisticated skills later in adulthood, and (2) the plastic nature of these skills, how they are shaped by enculturation and experience, how they develop as we acquire expertise in decoding communication.
So far, I have studied how infants interpret biological motion, how nonverbal actions like direct gaze and pointing influence what we remember, what facial features grab the attention of a species domesticated to live and work with humans, how children and adults from a remote tribe interpret and reinterpret visual symbolic materials, and how the cortical face processing network changes from childhood through adulthood.
In future work, I want to understand how visual regions of the brain represent the contents of others' mental states, how timing and expertise tune the organization of high-level visual regions in the brain during development, and whether developmental disorders of social communication involve disturbances to this organization that can be targeted through early intervention.
Benson, N.C., Yoon, J.M.D., Forenzo, D., Kay, K.N., Engel, S.A., & Winawer, J. (under review). Variability of the Surface Area of the V1, V2, and V3 Maps in a Large Sample of Human Observers. Biorxiv.
Yoon, J.M.D., Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., & Markman, E. (in revision). Vision and revision: Perceptual reorganization of two-tone images in preschoolers (PDF*: file is 3.7MB).
Gomez, J., Pestilli, F., Witthoft, N., Golarai, G., Liberman, A., Yoon, J.M.D., & Grill-Spector, K. (2015). Functionally defined white matter reveals segregated pathways in human ventral temporal cortex associated with category-specific processing. Neuron.
Movie* courtesy of Gomez, J: Inf. Long. Fasc. (blue); Functionally-related white matter paths for face- (red) and place- (green) selective cortex.
Link to related F31 NIMH NRSA awarded to Yoon, J.M.D. and sponsored by Grill-Spector, K. & Dougherty, R.F., funded Round 1.
Yoon, J.M.D., Witthoft, N., Winawer, J., Frank, M.C., Everett, D., & Gibson, E. (2014). Cultural differences in photo-triggered perceptual reorganization. PLOS One (Link to related conference submission also co-authored by Markman, E.M.)
Yoon, J.M.D., & Vouloumanos, A. (2014). When and how does autism begin? Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Yoon, J.M.D., Witthoft, N., Nguyen, M., & Greicius, M.D. (2012). Volumetric changes in subcortical anatomy before and after the onset of Capgras Delusion: a case study. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting.
Yoon, J.M.D., Range, F., Huber, L., Csibra, G., & Viranyi, Z. (2011). Shared pattern of face preferences in human infants and pet dogs. Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting.
Chen, F.S. & Yoon, J.M.D. (2010). Direct gaze reciprocity predicts self-reported autism spectrum characteristics. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Yoon, J.M.D. & Tennie, C. (2010). Contagious yawning: a reflection of empathy, mimicry, or contagion? Animal Behaviour.
Press: Goldman, J. (2013). Searching for the social in contagious yawning. Scientific American blog.
Golarai, G., Liberman, A., Yoon, J.M.D., & Grill-Spector, K. (2010). Differential development of the ventral cortex extends through adolescence. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Yoon, J.M.D. & Johnson, S.C. (2009). Biological motion displays elicit social behavior in 12-month-olds. Special section on Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience. Child Development.
Yoon, J.M.D., Johnson, M.H., & Csibra, G. (2008). Communication-induced memory biases in preverbal infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Press: Chin, G. (2008). Editors' Choice: Psychology: Socialized Learning. Science.
Discussion: International Cognition and Culture Institute blog, "Pedagogy Week," 2011
Yoon, J.M.D., Golarai, G., Dougherty, R.F., Ben-Schachar, M., Liberman, A., & Grill-Spector, K. (2008). Fiber tracts connecting mid-fusiform and lateral occipital regions. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting.
Yoon, J.M.D., Perry, L.M., Dougherty, R.F., & Ben-Schachar, M. (2007). Dorsal and ventral fiber tracts of the pOTS in adults and children. Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting.
Yoon, J.M.D. (2004). Is brain development Darwinian?: Group selection and neural ontogenetic change. Dualist.