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1. Fostering creativity in science education reshapes semantic memory

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2024.101593  

   Lai, Clin KY; Haim, Edith; Aschauer, Wolfgang; Haim, Kurt; Beaty, Roger E (September 2024, Thinking Skills and Creativity)

   Fostering creativity is vital for tackling 21st-century challenges, and education plays a key role in nurturing this skill. According to the associative theory, creativity involves connecting distant concepts in semantic memory. Here, we explore how semantic memory changes following an educational intervention intended to promote creativity. Specifically, we examine how a scientific education curriculum—Scientific Creativity in Practice (SCIP) program—impacts the semantic memory networks of 10–18-year-old students in a chemistry class (n = 176). Students in an Intervention group who received the SCIP intervention, and a Control group who did not, completed creative thinking tests, as well as verbal fluency tasks to estimate semantic networks in science-specific (chemistry) and domain-general (animal) categories. Results showed that the SCIP intervention enhanced performance on one test of scientific creative thinking but showed no significant difference on another. Using network science methods, we observed increased interconnectedness in both science-specific and domain-general categories, with lower path distances between concepts and reduced modularity. These traits define a ‘small-world’ network, balancing connections between closely related and remote concepts. Notably, the chemistry semantic network showed substantially more reorganization, consistent with the chemistry contents of the SCIP intervention. The findings suggest that semantic memory reorganization may be a cognitive mechanism underlying successful creativity interventions in science education. 

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2. Flexible semantic network structure supports the production of creative metaphor

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2021.1879508  

   Li, Yangping; Kenett, Yoed N.; Hu, Weiping; Beaty, Roger E. (January 2021, Creativity Research Journal)

   null (Ed.)

   Metaphors are a common way to express creative language, yet the cognitive basis of figurative language production remains poorly understood. Previous studies found that higher creative individuals can better comprehend novel metaphors, potentially due to a more flexible semantic memory network structure conducive to remote conceptual combination. The present study extends this domain to creative metaphor production and examined whether the ability to produce creative metaphors is related to variation in the structure of semantic memory. Participants completed a creative metaphor production task and two verbal fluency tasks. They were divided into two equal groups based on their creative metaphor production score. The semantic networks of these two groups were estimated and analyzed based on their verbal fluency responses using a computational network science approach. Results revealed that the semantic networks of high-metaphor producing individuals were more flexible, clustered, and less rigid than that of the low-metaphor producing individuals. Importantly, these results replicated across both semantic categories. The findings provide the first evidence that a flexible, clustered, and less rigid semantic memory structure relates to people’s ability to produce figurative language, extending the growing literature on the role of semantic networks in creativity to the domain of metaphor production. 

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3. Semantic Networks Extracted from Students’ Think-Aloud Data are Correlated with Students’ Learning Performance

   https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.emnlp-main.1309  

   Yang, Pingjing; Jeoung, Sullam; Cromley, Jennifer; Diesner, Jana (January 2025, Association for Computational Linguistics)

   When students reflect on their learning from a textbook via think aloud, network representations can be used to capture their concepts and relations. What can we learn from these network representations about students’ learning processes, knowledge acquisition, and learning outcomes? This study brings methods from entity and relation extraction using classic and LLM-based methods to the application domain of educational psychology. We built a ground-truth baseline of relational data that represent relevant (to educational science), textbook-based information as a semantic network. We identified SPN4RE and LUKE as the most accurate method to extracting semantic networks capturing the same types of information from transcriptions of verbal student data. Correlating the students’ semantic networks with learning outcomes showed that students’ verbalizations varied in structure, reflecting different learning processes. Denser and more interconnected semantic networks indicated more elaborated knowledge acquisition. Structural features such as the number of edges and surface overlap with textbook networks significantly correlated with students’ posttest performance. 

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4. The role of semantic memory networks in crystallized intelligence and creative thinking ability

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2024.102426  

   Li, Yangping; Beaty, Roger E; Luchini, Simone; Hu, Weiping; Kenett, Yoed N (April 2024, Learning and Individual Differences)

   Crystallized intelligence (Gc)—knowledge acquired through education and experience—supports creativity. Yet whether Gc contributes to creativity beyond providing access to more knowledge, remains unclear. We explore the role of a “flexible” semantic memory network structure as a potential shared mechanism of Gc and creativity. Across two studies (N = 506 and N = 161) participants completed Gc tests of vocabulary knowledge and were divided into low, medium, and high Gc groups. They also completed two alternate uses tasks, to assess verbal creativity, and a semantic fluency task, to estimate semantic memory networks. Across both studies, the semantic memory network structure of the high Gc group was more flexible—less structured, more clustered, and more interconnected—than that of the low Gc group. The high Gc group also outperformed the low Gc group on the creativity tasks. Our results suggest that flexible access to semantic memory supports both verbal intelligence and creativity. 

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5. Reading Outside the Box: HBCU Preservice Teachers, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Letterbox Lessons

   Davis C.H., Tani (January 2020, Florida journal of educational research)

   null (Ed.)

   This study offers a preliminary investigation of gains in students’ early literacy reading scores when historically Black college or university preservice teachers facilitate letterbox lesson interventions during field clinical experiences with at-risk readers using culturally relevant pedagogy and materials. The aims of this study were to (a) assess overall gains in reading and (b) examine more specific gains in phoneme awareness, letter naming fluency, decoding, and spelling. Using t-test comparisons, results indicate significant gains between the administered pre- and post-reading assessments on phonemic awareness development, letter naming fluency, and spelling abilities. The findings suggest culturally relevant pedagogy combined with clinical letterbox interventions may particularly support the reading achievement of at-risk readers. Additional research is needed to better understand the impact of historically Black college or university preservice teachers’ use of culturally relevant materials and pedagogy and field clinical letterbox interventions with at-risk readers. 

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