Learning about complex associations between pieces of information enablesindividuals to quickly adjust their expectations and develop mental models.Yet, the degree to which humans can learn higher-order information aboutcomplex associations is not well understood; nor is it known whether thelearning process differs for social and non-social information. Here, we employa paradigm in which the order of stimulus presentation forms temporalassociations between the stimuli, collectively constituting a complex networkstructure. We examined individual differences in the ability to learn networktopology for which stimuli were social versus non-social. Although participantswere able to learn both social and non-social networks, their performance insocial network learning was uncorrelated with their performance in non-socialnetwork learning. Importantly, social traits, including social orientation andperspective-taking, uniquely predicted the learning of social networks but notthe learning of non-social networks. Taken together, our results suggest thatthe process of learning higher-order structure in social networks isindependent from the process of learning higher-order structure in non-socialnetworks. Our study design provides a promising approach to identifyneurophysiological drivers of social network versus non-social networklearning, extending our knowledge about the impact of individual differences onthese learning processes. Implications for how people learn and adapt to newsocial contexts that require integration into a new social network arediscussed.
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