Society for Neuroscience releases interesting findings from new research on mirror neurons. Of particular interest to my thesis in educational game design were the conclusions that:
- If a subject is paying attention to some activity in the field, then that level attention promotes neural mirroring, whether or not the subject is attending to the particular activity being mirrored.
- A special set of mirror neurons in the observer fire when the observed subject is physically proximate to the observer.
- Also, neural mirroring is maximal when the subject is identified as oneself (as in a video of oneself). Next to this is family and friends. Least conducive to neural mirroring is strangers.
Since I have some interest in the quality of life for non-human animals, too, a side note for animal rights activists: mirror neurons were discovered, about 11 years ago, through experiments on monkeys. Yet I, personally, view this as offset by the benefits of treatment for autism, schizophrenia, and one more thing. Learning.
The above findings inform how the quality of life for humans not diagnosed with neural dysfunction can be increased through improved learning. Neural mirroring is related, if not required, for learning many classes of skills.
Some design tips that come to mind are: when providing a tutorial, first have the teacher be closely identified with the user. One method for doing this may be to let the user choose the teacher's appearance, coupled with storytelling techniques to suggest a bond of friendship or family.
Then the teacher ought to be physically proximate. By the way, does this experimental correlation of proximity and neural mirroring partially explain the old adage that those who sit at the front of the class get better marks?
The last major tip I see is already obvious. Get the user to pay attention before the proposed neural mirroring. One simple technique is the countdown seen in BrainAge. The screen goes completely white, which jars the nerves in the retina and automatically requests attention. Cognitive science of vision has a host of techniques for visual stimulation characteristics that get attention: movement, contrast, and irregularity. Hollywood action movies and TV melodrama provide slews of other obvious techniques for attention getting.
I'm still skeptical of the most radical part, that the activity being mirrored need not be the focus of attention. Maybe that is one aspect where neural mirroring and learning diverge.