What playing Minecraft tells researchers about social learning

Minecraft is a movie and a very popular video game with iconic block graphics that characters can "mine" for building material and gems. It's also what cognitive scientist Charley Wu and his team utilized to study how people learned as they played. Their unique study focused on both individual and social learning — and they found a clear answer to which players were most successful. (Hint: Get you a player who can do both.) Their results were published recently in the journal Nature Communications. Want to hear more about new science research? Let us know by emailing [email protected] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

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Samsung is giving away FREE vacuum cleaners worth £1,199 in cheeky dig at rival

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