• Question: do we ever stop learning, or do we learn really quick as children and then slow down learning when we get really old?

    Asked by aworswick to Tim, Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi on 18 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by pleahy97.
    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi @aworswick

      Thanks for the excellent question! Scientists have debated this for a long time. In general it seems that we keep learning whatever age we are, but that we find it easier to learn certain things when we are younger. Language for example seems to be easier to learn when you are exposed to it as a baby. Learning how to pronounce sounds in different languages is much easier as a baby than as an adult.
      As we get older we start to lose more brain cells that form connections important for learning, so learning language as a child may be easier because of the speed of growing connections in our brains. However, the way that we talk to children is also very different from how we talk to adults, and this may actually help children learn language better than adults.

      I hope that answers your question.

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Hi @aworswick and @pleahy97

      I think Tim’s answered this really well! You can learn all the way through your life, it is still possible to learn new things as an old person, as long as you don’t have a disease like dementia which can affect your ability to form new memories.

      Thanks for the great question!

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      I can’t add much to what Tim and Suzi have said, of course! But it’s worth saying as well that there are different kinds of learning. Language learning is easiest to do when you are young, as Tim says, but other things must be much easier to learn when you are older – for example, learning to drive, which requires co-ordination and thinking about lots of different things at the same time, which would typically be very difficult for a child, I think.

      In fact, the thing about learning language and languages much more easily as a child is so true that, when I am doing an interview and I ask someone where they grew up, I’m definitely most interested in the time between when they were 4 and puberty (I don’t ask about puberty, though! I just ask where they were up to the age of 13). The reason for that is that it’s also much more difficult to change your accent after puberty. It’s possible for some people, but not for most, so for most people, the accent you have by the time you are 13 is the one you will be stuck with!

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