The research hypothesis proposes that students activate implicit and explicit linking patterns as concept-structuring criteria, like thinking prototypical processes. These processes share properties belonging to the explicit, such as linguistic referability, to areas in which the explicit and implicit merge, like spatial representability, and to the implicit, such as prototypicality, univocity and invariance, and thus can act as links between the two areas.

According to the experimental hypothesis, implicit learning constitutes a cognitive antecedent to explicit knowledge and its prototypical nature is ‘permanent’, that is it is constantly activated in cognitive processing and not only in the early stages of development. If implicit learning acts by default in cognitive processing in a continuous way, one may suppose that the implicit interfaces with the explicit on demand, and therefore in the intersections between the implicit and the explicit there may be linking patterns with a correlative function, such as thinking prototypical processing or basic logic.

Any identification of organizing criteria, if generalisable, could support the idea of the prototypicality, univocity and invariance implicit qualities that could be attributed to possible linking patterns between the implicit and the explicit. These patterns, which can be defined thinking prototypical processing or basic logic would therefore serve as generalisable organizing criteria, cognitive antecedents not necessarily liable to continuous transformations towards the explicit, with a permanent prototypical character, and that can be activated as ‘linking nodes’ in the presupposed intersection between implicit and explicit processing.

This consideration would be in favour of an interpretation of prototypical processing as the expression of linking patterns between explicit and implicit processing whose prototypical nature of ‘cognitive antecedent’ with respect to the growing complexity of thought should be interpreted in the sense of an adaptive, phylogenetic nature qualifying implicit learning as a ‘basic’, though constantly present process, in a sort of ‘permanent prototypicality’ in ontogenesis. It is a process which does not only have a role in the early stages of cognitive development, but remains available for activation also in the following course of development, as a default level always in a possible interaction with explicit processing.

The intersection between explicit and implicit processing could thus take place through linking patterns such as thinking prototypical processing. Having identified the presence of links between the explicit and the implicit and vice versa does not necessarily mean having separated the two processing fields as autonomous, distinct and parallel processes, but rather having distinguished them in their functions and considering their inter-relation, interconnection and interdependence possible.

Supposing the learning process entails the co-existence of two distinct aspects in the same process, the implicit and the explicit, the prototypical function of the implicit should be considered as a cognitive antecedent being ‘prior’ to the explicit processing not only in the early stages of development, and more or less transformable in it, but also as a potential that can be activated on demand and is constantly present in the continuous ‘interactive’ collaboration with explicit processing. It is a prototypical character that can be identified in specific intersection between the implicit and explicit, expressed through the activation of linking patterns like thinking prototypical processing or basic logic.

Teoria logiche di base

2011 F. Santoianni, Educational models of knowledge prototypes development. Connecting text comprehension to spatial recognition in primary school, Mind & Society. Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer (2011) 10:103-129.

2012 F. Santoianni e coll., L’approccio bioeducativo alla letto-scrittura. Attività didattiche e laboratoriali per la scuola dell’infanzia e la scuola primaria, Erickson, Trento.

2014 F. Santoianni, Modelli di studio. Apprendere con la teoria delle logiche elementari, Erickson, Trento.

2016 F. Santoianni, ed., The Concept of Time in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy. A Philosophical Thematic Atlas, Studies Applied Philosophy, Epistemology 24, Sapere Series, Springer International Publishing, Switzerland.

2021  Santoianni, F., Ciasullo, A., Sodano, N., Effects of Spatial Skill Training on Children’s Learning Outcomes. RTH Research Trends in Humanities 8: 13-30. FASCIA A.