iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Sara De Felice

Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 06/02/2026

A new theme issue of #PhilTransB examines the mechanisms of learning from social interaction. Read articles for free: buff.ly/K8v43YM

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Interesting point. By definition, if the lecture is live, it must be for both parts (lecturer and audience). If one of the two parts is watching the lecture 'offline' (recorded), then there is no liveness. Having the camera off may affect learning for other reasons - see www.cell.com/current-biol...

cell.com

Social interaction is a catalyst for adult human learning in online contexts

De Felice et al. find that in online sessions, live, interactive teaching improves learning compared to pre-recorded teaching, and this effect is sustained over a week. Viewing the teacher’s face impr...

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Overall, our findings point to a simpler explanation: Learning with others may be effective because the human mind treats live social contexts as special, even when interaction is minimal. Interactivity can help, but it may not be the central ingredient to boost learning.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

This matters for online education and AI learning tools. If contingency is the key driver, then systems may need to create a genuine sense of live presence rather than simply imitating interactive behaviours.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

This suggests that the contingent-learning boost we observed in 2021 may not depend on reciprocal dialogue. Instead, being in a live exchange, with the potential to interact, may already engage contingency-specific processes that support learning, such as attentional arousal and mutual-prediction.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

We asked: Do items with more interactivity lead to better learning? Across different linear mixed-effects models, the results were clear: no detectable relationship. Despite good variability in our metrics, higher interactivity did not predict higher learning.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Brilliant student Stan de Visser annotated the 49 live lessons from De Felice et al. 2021 item-by-item for teacher and learner separately for: • vocal feedback (“yeah”, "uh-hum", "ok" etc) • visual feedback (nodding, smiling) • questions We computed both incidence-based and time-based metrics.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

We preregistered and tested two contrasting hypotheses: is the learning boost due to interactivity, i.e. the back-and-forth between teacher and learner? Or is the key ingredient simply contingency, i.e. being in a real-time social exchange, that triggers live-specific processes to support learning?

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

In De Felice et al. 2021 Current Biology, we found a robust effect: live video-call teaching led to better learning than watching a recorded video of the same session. Same teacher, same explanations, same stimuli, but live social learning improved learning. The next question was why?

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

In 2021 we reported that live learning outperformed recorded learning. In a new preregistered analysis, my first senior-author paper led by Stan de Visser (pre-print), we find that this benefit does not increase with interactivity. The potential to interact may be enough to boost learning. A thread:

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Ryssa Moffat @ryssamoffat.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

What happens in the brain as people become less lonely? Intergenerational community programs can reduce loneliness, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. We collected and analysed 732 🧠-scans to find out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @introspection.bsky.social + @escross.bsky.social

biorxiv.org

Longitudinal intergenerational hyperscanning reveals indices of relationship formation and loneliness

Loneliness is globally acknowledged as a severe and burgeoning health risk, fuelling interest in helping people of all ages form meaningful social connections. One promising approach consists of inter...

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Gal Rozic @galrozic.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Had the opportunity to present our #fNIRS hyperscanning study @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social @saradefelice.bsky.social at #ICON2025 in the Social And Embodied Language Learning Symposium. Felt small in the huge auditorium but the room was filled w/ inspiring questions!

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Gal Rozic @galrozic.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Had a great time presenting our #fNIRS study w/ @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social @saradefelice.bsky.social @ #ESCOP2025!🧠 Grateful for the thought-provoking discussions that keep inspiring our work. A fantastic conference ending on a high note in beautiful Peak District ⛰️

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

This is such a nice welcome at flux! Thank you for this award at my first Flux Conference Meeting #flux2025 @fluxsociety.bsky.social

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Looking forward to what it seems will be an excellent and thought-provoking symposium at #flux2025 @fluxsociety.bsky.social

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Flux Society @fluxsociety.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

🎓 FLUX is proud to spotlight Dr. Sara De Felice. Her research studies the role of naturalistic social interaction in human learning and model the behavioural and neural dynamics that support this process. Read the full interview at the link below: 👉 buff.ly/yzDQLA6

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

I wrongly booked my #flights to @fluxsociety.bsky.social #flux2025 in #Dublin twice. Tickets are from #Naples to #Dublin and from #Dublin to #London x2 adults + infant + x2 10kg bags. Dates and destinations (and passenger name) can be changed for a fee. Contact me if interested! Please share!

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

The British Science Festival - one of Europe’s longest-running science festivals - is happening 10-14 September 2025 in Liverpool! Lots of FREE events for all: britishsciencefestival.org?_gl=1%2Axaa2...

britishsciencefestival.org

British Science Festival | homepage

The British Science Festival is one of Europe’s longest-running science festivals, hosted at a new location each year. The Festival provides a platform for …

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Gabriella Vigliocco @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

How do our brains and bodies support social learning in real time in the real-world? Check out the preprint by @saradefelice.bsky.social et al. Honoured to have been part of the team!

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

A Friday afternoon post to share our new paper (pre-print)! We modelled brain & behaviour & physiology from 27 unconstrained social learning interactions. Learning emerged from non-linear brain-gaze coupling and asymmetric neural dependencies suggesting mutual prediction. Full thread below ⬇️

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

This study contributes to move beyond isolated brain analyses toward multimodal models of learning as an emergent property of real-time, reciprocal interaction at both neural and behavioural levels.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Importantly, these cross-brain effects remained after accounting for gaze, nodding, speech and breathing, addressing common critiques that INS merely reflects shared sensory input or movement. Instead, we provide evidence for INS being a marker of mutual prediction in naturalistic interactions.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

We found strong effects of speaking: participants showed greater activity in left SPL during self-speaking. In addition, we found that learner’s left SPL activity predicted teacher’s left PMv activity, suggesting role-dependent coordination in the language network.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

This allowed us to examine asymmetric effects of speaking/listening and teaching/learning, going beyond the predominant focus on symmetric analyses of inter-brain coordination in existing research.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Question 2: Can one person’s brain activity be predicted from their partner’s behaviour and neural signals? Here we used a xGLM to model each individual’s activation as a function of self and partner’s gaze, speech, head-movement and physiology & partner's neural data.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

These findings suggest that different social behaviours engage distinct patterns of brain-to-brain coupling that support learning through different cognitive dynamics.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

In contrast, during moments of mutual grounding, learning is supported by high mutual gaze and high INS in systems for mutual understanding (TPJ).

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

We propose a dual-process model. When teacher and learner are not yet aligned, learning is supported by informational uptake dynamic, with high joint attention, low INS in regions for mutual understanding (TPJ) and coordination (right PMv), and high INS in language-related areas (left PMv).

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

This analysis revealed that learning was supported by teacher-learner inter-brain synchrony (INS), over regions important for mutual understanding (TPJ) and communicative coordination (PMv). Joint attention and mutual gaze modulated the relationship between INS and learning with opposite effects.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

This paper asks two key questions: Question 1: Which neural and behavioural dynamics predict successful learning? Here we used wavelet coherence analysis to compute inter-brain synchrony and predict successful learning.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

We recorded simultaneous brain activity from 27 teacher–learner pairs as they taught each other facts about unfamiliar items as well as eye-gaze, speech, nodding and breathing.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

How do our brains and bodies support social learning in real time? We take an ecological and multimodal neuroscience approach to study mutual prediction and social coordination when learning with others. It took 5 full years for this one! Full open-access pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Antonia Hamilton @antoniahamilton.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Delighted to attend #ebbs2025 and share new work from @saradefelice.bsky.social and @paulawicher.bsky.social

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

If you are in the process of designing a #fNIRS study to investigate cognition and want a list of dos and don'ts, have a look at our primer. Pre-print available here: osf.io/preprints/ps... @islalj.bsky.social @chiarabulgarelli.bsky.social @paola182.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social

osf.io

OSF

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Pascal Vrticka @pvrticka.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Last chance to apply for a fully-funded 2-year #PostDoc in my @soneatlab.bsky.social @universityofessex.bsky.social using #fNIRS #hyperscanning & behavioural assessment in #children. 👉🏻 SWITCH: pvrticka.com/switch-proje... Deadline: 01.06.25 Start: 01.10.25 vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

vacancies.essex.ac.uk

Job profile

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Reposted by Sara De Felice

Gabriella Vigliocco @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction. Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!

jobs.ac.uk

Research Fellow in Social Learning at UCL

Discover Research Fellow in Social Learning jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

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Sara De Felice @saradefelice.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Honoured and grateful to have received a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out my LEARNINSYNC project! Together wih @giacomonovembre.bsky.social at the IIT (Rome) we will look at LEARNing IN social interaction and the role of inter-brain SYNChrony. #MSCA #EuropeanCommission #Horizon

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