  Learning about complex associations between pieces of information enables
individuals to quickly adjust their expectations and develop mental models.
Yet, the degree to which humans can learn higher-order information about
complex associations is not well understood; nor is it known whether the
learning process differs for social and non-social information. Here, we employ
a paradigm in which the order of stimulus presentation forms temporal
associations between the stimuli, collectively constituting a complex network
structure. We examined individual differences in the ability to learn network
topology for which stimuli were social versus non-social. Although participants
were able to learn both social and non-social networks, their performance in
social network learning was uncorrelated with their performance in non-social
network learning. Importantly, social traits, including social orientation and
perspective-taking, uniquely predicted the learning of social networks but not
the learning of non-social networks. Taken together, our results suggest that
the process of learning higher-order structure in social networks is
independent from the process of learning higher-order structure in non-social
networks. Our study design provides a promising approach to identify
neurophysiological drivers of social network versus non-social network
learning, extending our knowledge about the impact of individual differences on
these learning processes. Implications for how people learn and adapt to new
social contexts that require integration into a new social network are
discussed.
