4 ms·

i'm having a hard time sourcing either side of the argument, but kids learn a ton of shit. an adult learning a language has the benefit of both abstract and pr

i'm having a hard time sourcing either side of the argument, but kids learn a ton of shit. an adult learning a language has the benefit of both abstract and pragmatic knowledge of language, having spoken at least one for some time. they don't need to spend time learning, for example, how to move their tongue to make different noises. an adult learning a language also has the benefit of being able to read, or listen, to facilitate their learning. a child learns a language without any of this groundwork. i feel like maybe you are underestimating the sheer amount of information a child has to process and how completely foreign everything we take for granted is to them.

sizzle 13y ago
I remember learning about a study in a neuroscience class regarding language and how, before the critical period in a child's mind, they could learn many languages because their brain had not settled on any one particular language. The "shape" of words (word length, voxels, parts of speech etc) effectively became hard coded in their minds after the critical period ended so they could easily recognize that language, but from then on they can't learn languages easily as precritical period. Anyone familiar with the topic care to further elaborate on this phenomenon? thanks
- catshirt 13y ago
  this sibling comment seems to be a good start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491549
  - sizzle 13y ago
    thank you, I'll find the peer reviewed paper in the Wikipedia footnotesm
aaren 13y ago
On the other hand, children have little else to do but absorb new information and they take a good number of years doing it. Adults have a load of responsibilities that they have to occupy their minds with. Compared to the carefree oblivion of childhood I think it is remarkable that adults can learn anything new at all. There does seem to be a lack of research that attempts to correct for this, or at least I can't find it. In the absence of data, I prefer to believe that I'm at least as able to learn new things as 6 year old me.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - aaren 13y ago
    My counter hypothesis is that children can't possibly conceive the amount of information an adult has to keep track of day to day. What if we distinguish first language acquisition as a special process? If you don't acquire a language in the first place then you have no framework for formal learning. A better comparison might be second language acquisition in children and adults (see my post about FLA/SLA above). Maybe we could look at acquisition of a physical skill as a fair comparison? I think there is a distinction between infants and children. Neither have anything to do but learn, eat and sleep, but children have gone through the unimaginable process of connecting their senses to the world. I don't really have much more to add, these are just my uninformed guesses.
    - waps 13y ago
      The difference between kids' learning and adult learning is the timeframe of the events that can be stored into long-term memory. Kids can learn very short term things, adults cannot. Our brains work by modelling the future, then picking a desirable choice of actions to change that future. What changes when we get older is how far out we model the future. In babies it's tenths of a second up to less than half a minute (in foetuses it's a few milliseconds up to dozens of milliseconds). In adults it's a few minutes to a few months. Everything that gets bypassed by the short time horizon is frozen in place (and is critical for survival, e.g. making your heart beat is one such frozen circuit) For example, walking (and especially running) requires very short feedback loops in your brain. If you don't learn how to do it as a kid (yes, sadly that does happen) you will never be able to do it well. Language is another example where you need to learn short feedback loops. This means that language learning in kids is fundamentally different from adult language learning. Kids learn a language. Meaning they learn to express their thoughts in that language. There is no level below that language, and they start thinking like that language thinks. Adults learn how to express one language by using another language and express their thoughts and thinking in the original language, and then translate. This can become really fast, but for example you notice the difference in the number of nuances someone can express if they learnt a language as kids versus if they learnt the language as an adult. For example, what is the difference in certainty of "I think I heard him say that X" versus "I thought I heard him say that X". You will notice that native speakers are sure to have an opinion on the matter. This has reverse consequences as well. Kids' brains only take a very limited future time frame into account, meaning they will never really understand why you do something that will take weeks or months to produce a reward, or why you avoid doing something because it means bad things will happen in a months time. A kid will have a very tough time getting a feel for why buildings don't collapse, or generally to work on long term efforts. In short you can switch expertise to longer term things (e.g. music -> painting is probably fine, but the reverse would be VERY hard indeed). It also means that you will very likely blow up your life if you ever manage to reset this particular ageing process. If you're married, for example, that will mean nothing to you any more if you manage to reset your time horizon back to minutes to hours. I would expect you to have problems maintaining a bank account balance similar to when you were 6 years old.

sizzle 13y ago

I remember learning about a study in a neuroscience class regarding language and how, before the critical period in a child's mind, they could learn many languages because their brain had not settled on any one particular language. The "shape" of words (word length, voxels, parts of speech etc) effectively became hard coded in their minds after the critical period ended so they could easily recognize that language, but from then on they can't learn languages easily as precritical period. Anyone familiar with the topic care to further elaborate on this phenomenon? thanks

catshirt 13y ago
this sibling comment seems to be a good start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491549
- sizzle 13y ago
  thank you, I'll find the peer reviewed paper in the Wikipedia footnotesm

aaren 13y ago

On the other hand, children have little else to do but absorb new information and they take a good number of years doing it. Adults have a load of responsibilities that they have to occupy their minds with. Compared to the carefree oblivion of childhood I think it is remarkable that adults can learn anything new at all. There does seem to be a lack of research that attempts to correct for this, or at least I can't find it. In the absence of data, I prefer to believe that I'm at least as able to learn new things as 6 year old me.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- aaren 13y ago
  My counter hypothesis is that children can't possibly conceive the amount of information an adult has to keep track of day to day. What if we distinguish first language acquisition as a special process? If you don't acquire a language in the first place then you have no framework for formal learning. A better comparison might be second language acquisition in children and adults (see my post about FLA/SLA above). Maybe we could look at acquisition of a physical skill as a fair comparison? I think there is a distinction between infants and children. Neither have anything to do but learn, eat and sleep, but children have gone through the unimaginable process of connecting their senses to the world. I don't really have much more to add, these are just my uninformed guesses.
  - waps 13y ago
    The difference between kids' learning and adult learning is the timeframe of the events that can be stored into long-term memory. Kids can learn very short term things, adults cannot. Our brains work by modelling the future, then picking a desirable choice of actions to change that future. What changes when we get older is how far out we model the future. In babies it's tenths of a second up to less than half a minute (in foetuses it's a few milliseconds up to dozens of milliseconds). In adults it's a few minutes to a few months. Everything that gets bypassed by the short time horizon is frozen in place (and is critical for survival, e.g. making your heart beat is one such frozen circuit) For example, walking (and especially running) requires very short feedback loops in your brain. If you don't learn how to do it as a kid (yes, sadly that does happen) you will never be able to do it well. Language is another example where you need to learn short feedback loops. This means that language learning in kids is fundamentally different from adult language learning. Kids learn a language. Meaning they learn to express their thoughts in that language. There is no level below that language, and they start thinking like that language thinks. Adults learn how to express one language by using another language and express their thoughts and thinking in the original language, and then translate. This can become really fast, but for example you notice the difference in the number of nuances someone can express if they learnt a language as kids versus if they learnt the language as an adult. For example, what is the difference in certainty of "I think I heard him say that X" versus "I thought I heard him say that X". You will notice that native speakers are sure to have an opinion on the matter. This has reverse consequences as well. Kids' brains only take a very limited future time frame into account, meaning they will never really understand why you do something that will take weeks or months to produce a reward, or why you avoid doing something because it means bad things will happen in a months time. A kid will have a very tough time getting a feel for why buildings don't collapse, or generally to work on long term efforts. In short you can switch expertise to longer term things (e.g. music -> painting is probably fine, but the reverse would be VERY hard indeed). It also means that you will very likely blow up your life if you ever manage to reset this particular ageing process. If you're married, for example, that will mean nothing to you any more if you manage to reset your time horizon back to minutes to hours. I would expect you to have problems maintaining a bank account balance similar to when you were 6 years old.