Learning

Last post I described what a dyadic interaction is and why we think it is a useful way to learn.
This post will explore what learning is and how we learn.

Merriam-Webster defines learning as:
1. knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study
2. modification of a behavioral tendency by experience (as exposure to conditioning)


     There are many different types of learning that include, but are not limited to, habituation, sensitization, classical conditioning and observational learning. Each type of learning describes a different process which enables an individual to retain some sort of skill or knowledge. 
     Classical conditioning, for example, describes the process of using an unconditioned stimulus and response and pairing them with a conditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response. The archetype for this type of learning is Pavlov's dogs. The unconditioned stimulus was meat powder and the unconditioned response to this powder is salivation by the dogs. Pavlov then paired this stimulus with a conditioned stimulus, a bell, to produce the unconditioned response of salivating to the bell. Every time Pavlov introduced meat powder to the dogs he would also ring a bell and after enough repetitions of this, the dogs began salivating when no meat powder was introduced at all and just the bell was rung. 
     Observational learning is learning which occurs after observation of a model. This is the type of learning which occurred in my first paper, when our subjects' performance improved after watching an avatar perform a task. This is also the type of learning which we hope will occur when we introduce dyadic interactions into a virtual environment. The other humans in the scene will help our subjects to mimic observed actions and learn from watching the results of actions taken within the environment. 
 

Dyadic Interactions

The first step in my research is to understand the topic that I will be studying completely. I will eventually come up with a series of experiments to investigate the issues that I have chosen to address. I first have to have a clear understanding of what is already understood about my topic and to do this I have broken my project down in to understanding:
1) Dyadic interactions
2) Learning

This post will explore dyadic interactions.
A dyadic interaction is, according to the Oxford University Press, an "interaction between two people (a dyad); interpersonal interaction."
Work by Neomy Storch titled "Relationships formed in dyadic interactions and opportunity for learning" investigates how the relationships between pairs can help to promote learning in the context of a university second language classroom (ESL) setting, Storch claims that there are different types of relationships formed, those of a collaborative nature and those that take a dominant/dominant form. She investigates how the type of relationship then translates to individual learning.
The work by Neomy Storch is supported by a large body of work that looks at the importance of dyadic interactions within a classroom, especially one  with the purpose of teaching a second language. The interactions help to catalyze the learning process and allow the student to feel more comfortable with the material, which in turn allows a better understanding of the material.
All of this work investigates dyadic interactions, and how we can use this information to better understand social interactions.
The work that I would like to accomplish through my current project will look at dyadic interactions as a tool for not only studying social interactions and the transfer of knowledge, but also the transfer of skills.
My previous work, "The influence of avatar (self and character) animations on distance estimation, object interaction and locomotion in immersive virtual environments" addressed the question of how adding other human beings to a Virtual Environment (VE) (whether it was in the form of a previously recorded animation or a self-representation of the user within the environment) affected task performance on three simple tasks. We found that adding either form of human character to the scene did help to improve task performance, and we conclude that the presence of other characters within the scene provides users with helpful cues such as familiar size cues and biological movement cues that are typically absent from VEs. It will be interesting to extend this work, then, and look at the influence a character into the VE that our users can interact with, as opposed to passively watching a recorded character perform a task.

The above is a very brief overview of the motivation for my current project. Next week I will discuss different methods in which humans learn, so we can understand the reasons behind why dyadic interactions seem to be such a powerful tool for enabling the learning process.

References:

Neomy Storch, "Relationships formed in dyadic interaction

and opportunity for learning",International Journal of Educational

Research, Volume 37, Issues 3-4, 2002, Pages 305-322, ISSN 0883-0355,

10.1016/S0883-0355(03)00007-7.

University of Utah 10/06-08

This past week was Fall Break at Vanderbilt University so I took the opportunity to accept an invitation from Dr. Bill Thompson and head out to the University of Utah. I am currently in the process of looking at PhD programs and this was my first trip out to see a school in person.
I was supposed get in on Thursday morning, but unfortunately my flight was cancelled due to a mechanical issue with the door so I didn't end up arriving until Friday at 10:30 am. Dr. Thompson picked me up from the airport and we promptly performed an exercise in perception while riding up and down the escalators with one eye closed, demonstrating the difficulties that people with extremely low vision face.
We then headed to campus and went straight to a group lab meeting where I was introduced to the graduate students who work with Dr. Thompson, Dr. Sarah Creem-Regehr and Dr. Jeanine Stefanucci. I, along with another visiting student named Kaushik Satyavolu, presented our most recent work to the group and had a chance to discuss it with them. I also got a chance to talk to them about their VR setup, and got some good ideas on how I will implement dyadic interactions within our own here at Vanderbilt.
The research group is a unique blend of psychologists and computer scientists working together to do research on topics such as perception and action and presence, using virtual reality as a highly effective tool for studying such areas of research.
Overall, I had a very nice visit and got a chance to talk to many different faculty with a variety of research interests. I'm still trying to decide what to do at the end of this year, and this trip helped me a take a big step in figuring out what exactly I'm looking for!

Introduction

Hi, I am starting on a year-long project investigating perception and action of dyadic interactions in a virtual environment under the supervision of Professor Bobby Bodenheimer. We will be using the Learning in Virtual Environments (LIVE) lab here at Vanderbilt University to study the ways in which humans interact with each other in virtual reality when given a virtual self-representation of their own body (a self-avatar). We will be doing this by tracking various measures of learning experienced by the users of our environment while performing tasks such as playing catch and ping-pong.
This project is made possible through the support of the Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) program: http://cra-w.org/collaborative-research-experience-for-undergraduates-creu.
I will be keeping a blog of my progress throughout the process. You can find more information about myself and my past research at mantelish.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/erin (a work in progress).