Adolescents' Error Monitoring During Learning: Neural and Behavioral Comparison Studies of Montessori and Traditionally Schooled Students

• In Event: The New Science of Adolescence: Integrating Socio-Emotional and Academic Development in Research, Practice, and Policy

Abstract

Error monitoring is a fundamental function of learning. When individuals notice something unexpected, such as an error, they tend to pause, a phenomenon known as Post-Error Slowing (Ullsperger, Danielmeier, & Jocham, 2014). In learning from this discrepant event, they adapt their behavior accordingly, a phenomenon measured as post-error improvement in accuracy (Schroder & Moser, 2014). Along with executive functions, error-monitoring improves across development, with adult-like responses by mid-adolescence (e.g. Tamnes, Walhovd, Torstveit, Sells, & Fjell, 2013).
It is possible that error monitoring and its neural correlates are shaped by developmental experience, and in particular by schooling. Pedagogical traditions differ on how they teach children to learn from feedback and errors. Traditional education provides children from one age group with opportunities to engage in work, and then to learn about and correct their performance later based on a teacher’s feedback and evaluation. By contrast, Montessori education focuses on supporting children in self-correcting in real time. It utilizes specialized materials that encourage children’s self-discovery of relevant concepts, and multi-age classes in which children discuss answers as they work (Lillard, 2017; Montessori, 1936).
In this session I will present ongoing neural and behavioral studies of early adolescents from high quality traditional and Montessori schools. The behavioral and EEG neural data reveal significant differences in both how students notice and react to errors, and in how they self-correct. fMRI analyses reveal brain network connectivity differences between students from the two groups, and suggest differences in error correction strategies.
Our work suggests that how adolescents learn from errors reflects childhood schooling experience. Error monitoring styles are also likely associated with youths’ cognitive flexibility more broadly, influencing how they react to novel or unexpected outcomes. The findings have implications for adolescents’ developing neural sensitivities to reward and risk-taking, and for approaches to secondary schooling.

Author

• Solange Denervaud, University of Geneva