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I'm skeptical of arguments based on neuroplasticity or learning styles for the following reason. Given how good people are at learning in general (it is the evo
by conistonwater 10y ago
I'm skeptical of arguments based on neuroplasticity or learning styles for the following reason. Given how good people are at learning in general (it is the evolutionary advantage that humans have), it would in fact be extremely surprising if there was anything short of an illness that shut down somebody's ability to learn things. Thus ability to learn things, even when one is older, doesn't need an explanation, whereas inability to learn things does.
- tptacek 10y agoThere's definitely research that suggests our ability to learn some things, like verbal languages, slows down with age --- though I wasn't able to find a cite for whether that decline is gradual or whether there's some inflection at adulthood. Either way, I'd just caution that we not automatically extrapolate from those findings to the broader claim that every new skill acquisition is similarly impacted.
- conistonwater 10y agoAren't languages really special, though? I remember reading one's ability to learn even new sounds almost vanishes, which explains many people's accents, and which means it's more like a separate process in the brain. Coding, on the other hand, is a general, abstract skill. So I'd expect ability to learn coding to drop off at roughly the same rate as everything else with age. I think it's one of those things where there is a small negative effect, but it's so small that even if you knew about it, you'd still have many much more important things to think about and so you'd be right to ignore it.