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Indeed, semantic memory shows a 1.6 fold increase across elementary school years, with ~3200 root words being acquired between the second and the fifth grades 19. As the child develops, the experience within the environment assumes an important part in the continuation of concept learning 18.
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For example, parents’ socioeconomic level is tightly related to preschoolers’ vocabulary level 16, primarily until around the age of six 17.
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Such effects raise questions about how educational experiences shape children’s fundamental cognitive processes, such as concept learning.Įnvironmental interaction plays an essential role in how children first learn about words and concepts 7. When comparing Montessori and traditional educational approaches, Montessori classes have been shown to promote improved academic outcomes, socio-emotional learning, and divergent and/or convergent creativity 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Children in these classes are asked to learn and memorize concepts (i.e., rote learning), knowledge on which they are regularly tested and evaluated with grades (starting from 6 years of age). According to the Swiss educational plan, traditional education focuses on teacher-directed learning activities, introducing successively different topics (e.g., language, writing, geography, math) that children perform within single-age classes. Children in these classes routinely engage in interdisciplinary, discovery-based work to learn new concepts (e.g., draw the outline of the continents, write their names, and classify them according to their population size), such as conducting experiments in and out of the class, often with minimal (but guiding) feedback from teachers.
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Montessori education focuses on self-directed and uninterrupted learning activities that children perform within multi-age classes 9, 10. Montessori and traditional education can both be of high quality, but their approaches differ with respect to concept learning-an important feature of cognitive development supporting the acquisition of new vocabulary and crystallized knowledge. In the present research, we apply network science methods to investigate how different educational approaches, namely traditional and Montessori approaches, shape 5–12-year-old children’s internal knowledge representation in semantic memory (i.e., concept learning) and their ability to think flexibly and creatively. The organization of semantic memory plays a key role in higher cognitive functions, such as creative thinking 8. Despite the importance of experience on semantic knowledge (i.e., 7), few researches have focused on the role of school education in influencing not only how children acquire new knowledge, but also how they come to represent knowledge in long-term (semantic) memory. In this period of high brain plasticity 2, 3, children’s knowledge is acquired efficiently through statistical learning 4, 5 and it is significantly shaped by interactions with the environment 6. The findings indicate that education impacts how children represent concepts in semantic memory and suggest that different educational experiences can affect higher cognitive functions, including creative thinking.Įarly experience is of paramount importance for later cognitive and emotional outcomes 1. We find that children experiencing Montessori education show a more flexible semantic network structure (high connectivity/short paths between concepts, less modularity) alongside higher scores on creative thinking tests. Here we leverage computational network science tools to study hidden knowledge structures of 67 Swiss schoolchildren from two distinct educational backgrounds-Montessori and traditional, matched on socioeconomic factors and nonverbal intelligence-to examine how educational experience shape semantic memory and creative thinking. It is unknown, however, whether educational differences impact not only what concepts children learn, but how those concepts come to be represented in semantic memory-a system that supports higher cognitive functions, such as creative thinking. Education is central to the acquisition of knowledge, such as when children learn new concepts.