As the pandemic forced so many of our usual activities online, many pondered whether the virtual platforms had affected our activities. Indeed, data suggests that while remote working was good for business-as-usual tasks, it was less effective for innovation that still relies so heavily on physical proximity.

Research from Cornell suggests it’s not so much the means of interacting that matters as it is our orientation when doing so. The researchers suggest that sitting face-to-face with someone rather than shoulder-to-shoulder greatly enhances our ability not just to innovate but also to learn.

Problem solving

Across a number of experiments, participants were able to solve visual and spatial problems more effectively when they were watching a solution being demonstrated face-to-face than when they were watching it next to the model.

The researchers suggest that we’re best able to learn and engage with others when we can see not only the hands of our colleagues but also their eyes, gaze, and facial movements as these communicate invaluable social information about the task.

“This shared mental perspective might be more important for some types of learning than sharing a common visual perspective,” they explain. “Face-to-face interaction might facilitate creativity and innovation rather than strict mimicry of the teacher.”

The authors suggest that learning any kind of visuospatial task requires us to adopt the perspective of our teacher so that we can see the world through their eyes. The new findings suggest, however, that it might also be crucial that we can actually see their eyes.

Imitation game

The authors build on past studies, which show that it’s often easier to imitate the movements of our instructors when we can see what they see. When we move from that 0-degree position to a 180-degree position, however, our brains must employ a form of mental rotation to try and understand the movements of our instructor from this opposite perspective. As a result, this should, in theory at least, make learning harder, but that wasn’t the case.

“Remarkably, the simple act of sitting across from someone can help overcome limitations in shared visual perspective,” the researchers explain. “Face-to-face learning overrode the inherent difficulty of taking another’s visual perspective.”

The researchers point out that the participants weren’t successful in all ways when learning face-to-face, as they appeared to imitate less faithfully than their peers who were not head-on to their tutor. This didn’t seem to diminish their ability to achieve their goal, however, as they were both faster and more creative as they were able to go beyond what their tutor recommended.

“They weren’t as good at mimicking, but there’s a benefit to that because it facilitated discovery,” the researchers explain. “A social perspective—looking at people and where they look—allowed children and adults to become better learners at the condition that should have been the most challenging.”