Is it easier to comprehend what you learn, more as a child or as an adult?

Question

They say when you're a child your brain is like a sponge when it comes to learning. I would like to know if as a child they actually comprehend what they're learning, or are they just memorizing what they're taught. Just wondering because my son is in the first grade and seems to have memorized certain math exercises, but doesn't understand why they work. He just knows they do.

Answer 1

There are different areas in the brain controlling different functions in our lives. When we brush our teeth, sign our names or drive a car, we don't consciously think: "move the right hand up and down like this," "capitalize this letter," or "turn the wheel 30 degrees to the left." These are examples of automatic brain function. When children acquire language, this same part of the brain, called the "deep motor area," is what they use, so the language is like second nature.

But when adults learn a second or third language, their brains operates differently. The window of opportunity to imprint information and skills in the deep motor region of the brain is widest during early childhood and nearly shut by the time we reach about 18. Therefore, adults have to store information elsewhere, in a more active brain region. As a consequence, adults usually think sentences through in a native tongue and then translate them word-by-word, instead of thinking in automatically in another language like a child would. Even for people with extensive training in a second language as an adult, who feel their speech is automatic, on a neurological level the brain is still operating differently from a child's.

Research into the neurology of language acquisition is proving useful because understanding the "geographic" differences of language learning in children versus adults may influence educators and their decisions about foreign language instruction. As an example, Thompson says simply teaching young children the sounds and accents of other languages at an earlier age may be valuable, even if they are not getting full instruction in the language. Learning those sounds later in life – from a neurological perspective – can be more difficult.

Answer 2

I don't know why a lot of the college math I do works, but I still get the answers right on the test, and that is fine with me. Children understand people better than adults, and they excel at learning foreign languages.

Answer 3

You kind of answered your own question. =)

Yes, I suppose in a literal sense, they "learn" more, because they're more...open-minded, and they don't have the foundation and knowledge to contradict what they're being told.

But the fact that children tend to take things at face value may be at the expense of knowing WHY things work *that* way, and not *this* way.

Answer 4

Usually kids are taught to memorize, kinda like the flash cards, and multiplication chart. At least when I was kid that's how it was.