Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University Sapienza of Rome, Rome, Italy.
PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e53782. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0053782. Epub 2013 Jan 10.
Observing another person performing a complex action accelerates the observer's acquisition of the same action and limits the time-consuming process of learning by trial and error. Observational learning makes an interesting and potentially important topic in the developmental domain, especially when disorders are considered. The implications of studies aimed at clarifying whether and how this form of learning is spared by pathology are manifold. We focused on a specific population with learning and intellectual disabilities, the individuals with Williams syndrome. The performance of twenty-eight individuals with Williams syndrome was compared with that of mental age- and gender-matched thirty-two typically developing children on tasks of learning of a visuo-motor sequence by observation or by trial and error. Regardless of the learning modality, acquiring the correct sequence involved three main phases: a detection phase, in which participants discovered the correct sequence and learned how to perform the task; an exercise phase, in which they reproduced the sequence until performance was error-free; an automatization phase, in which by repeating the error-free sequence they became accurate and speedy. Participants with Williams syndrome beneficiated of observational training (in which they observed an actor detecting the visuo-motor sequence) in the detection phase, while they performed worse than typically developing children in the exercise and automatization phases. Thus, by exploiting competencies learned by observation, individuals with Williams syndrome detected the visuo-motor sequence, putting into action the appropriate procedural strategies. Conversely, their impaired performances in the exercise phases appeared linked to impaired spatial working memory, while their deficits in automatization phases to deficits in processes increasing efficiency and speed of the response. Overall, observational experience was advantageous for acquiring competencies, since it primed subjects' interest in the actions to be performed and functioned as a catalyst for executed action.
观察他人执行复杂动作会加速观察者对同一动作的习得，并限制通过试错进行学习的耗时过程。观察学习在发展领域是一个有趣且潜在重要的话题，尤其是在考虑到障碍时。旨在阐明这种学习形式是否以及如何免受病理学影响的研究的意义是多方面的。我们专注于一个具有学习和智力障碍的特定人群，即患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体。我们比较了 28 名患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体与 32 名具有相同心理年龄和性别匹配的典型发育儿童在通过观察或试错学习视觉运动序列方面的表现。无论学习方式如何，获得正确的序列都涉及三个主要阶段：检测阶段，参与者在此阶段发现正确的序列并学习如何执行任务；练习阶段，他们重复该序列直到没有错误；自动化阶段，通过重复无错误的序列，他们变得准确和快速。患有威廉姆斯综合征的参与者在检测阶段受益于观察性训练（在这种训练中，他们观察演员发现视觉运动序列），而在练习和自动化阶段的表现不如典型发育儿童。因此，通过利用通过观察获得的技能，患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体检测到视觉运动序列，实施了适当的程序策略。相反，他们在练习阶段的表现受损似乎与空间工作记忆受损有关，而他们在自动化阶段的缺陷则与提高反应效率和速度的过程中的缺陷有关。总体而言，观察经验有利于获得技能，因为它激发了受试者对要执行的动作的兴趣，并起到了执行动作的催化剂的作用。
