Stay close and maintain the possiblity of interaction

(this would normally be a shorter post about this cool article I found, but I went off on a riff; apologies!)

This is a really cool piece of neurological and psychological insight presented in a Wired article.

They have learned that "mirror neurons", which fire in our brains in response to observing someone doing something, are effected by our proximity to the person and also the possibility of interaction.
(more...)

I think this knowledge could be incorporated into many facets of our work -- individual interactions with learners, presentations, and certainly any future telepresence plans.

This is a phenomena I feel like I have seen before, but never understood. I learned quickly as a teacher that -- when helping a learner with a computer problem -- the act of ceasing control of the mouse triggers an instantaneous cognitive detachment from the issue at hand. You can see it in their facial expressions and body posture as they disengage the problem and relinquish control to you: it's a teacher's nightmare.

It's no wonder why, then, that the long-standing, but unwritten, LTC commandments proclaim "the mouse is sacred."

This research might tell us that this effect isn't necessarily caused by the act of controlling the mouse pointer, but rather the learner's lack of possibly controlling the mouse.

Therefore, this effect may be diminished if there were two mice (for instance) attached to the computer so that the learner would never relinquish control, only share it.