It is general knowledge that children are faster learners than adults. And your kid probably remembers where you left your keys, even though you forgot. No worries, it’s very common! A 5-year-old could beat most adults on a recognition memory test.
The brain area where working memory is stored is more developed in adults than it is in children. As a result, adults experience functional fixedness. This makes adults see everything exactly as it is. For instance, an adult will see a tennis racket exactly as it is. In contrast, a child will see a broomstick as a javelin stick. The creativity of children is caused by their prefrontal cortex, which gives them the ability to be flexible and inventive. Kids have minds that are designed to learn and adults have minds designed to perform.
On the other hand, a kid’s brain is continuously growing. Because of this, their brains exhibit more neural plasticity. As a result, they seem to absorb everything around them.
In a study, researchers recruited 77 young children and 71 college students and they showed them 30 pictures of cats, bears and birds. Volunteers were not aware of what was being tested. The participants were then showed 28 pictures again and they were asked whether the pictures were previously shown or new ones. The results showed that the children were accurate 31% of the time in identifying pictures of animals that they had seen earlier. Meanwhile, the adults were accurate only 7 % of the time.
This happens because children use a form of reasoning called similarity-based induction. When shown pictures of animals they looked carefully to see if the animal looked similar to the original cat. On the other hand, the adults used category-based induction, once they determined that the animal pictured was a cat they paid no more attention to the pictures.
Children also learn languages faster than adults. When a baby hears speech, the neurons in the brain area responsible for hearing form more synapses. The more they hear speech the stronger those connections become. This could also be because children have much less complex information to digest and have the ability to be quite creative when learning new things.
