Science discovers why children learn faster than adults

If you’ve ever thought that your elementary school kids are “smarter” than you, don’t worry, it’s normal. A study published in Current biology To explain because children grasp new information faster than adults.

According to the study, children and adults have differences in GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)a brain neurotransmitter responsible for stabilizing newly learned material.

The study verified that when faced with new visual stimuli, the GABA level of adults remains constant, while children get a quick boost which helps children’s brains to acquire new information more quickly and efficiently.

“Our results show that school-age children can learn more in a given period of time than adults, making learning more efficient for them,” says Takeo Watanabe of Brown University (Rhode Island, USA).

neural mechanisms

The study’s goal was to determine which neural mechanisms were responsible for more efficient learning among children.

To do this, they looked for differences in GABA and studied how levels change before, during, and after learning in children and adults.

Using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, they discovered this visual learning caused an increase in GABA in the children’s visual cortex – the area of ​​the brain that processes images— and that this increase lasted for several minutes after I finished my workout.

However, with the same visual training, adults had no change in GABA.

“In subsequent behavioral experiments, we found that children actually stabilized new learning much faster than adults, consistent with the common belief that children surpass adults in learning capacity,” says Sebastian M. Frank, now at the University of Regensburg (Germany).

And “GABA is a key element of effective learning in children,” concludes Frank.

The findings of the study “should further encourage teachers and parents to give children many opportunities to acquire new skills, whether it’s learning the times tables or getting on a bike,” the study advises.

The findings could also change neuroscientists’ understanding of children’s brain maturity.

Although children’s brains aren’t fully mature yet and many of their functions aren’t as efficient as adults’, “children aren’t, in general, outgrown by adults,” Watanabe notes.

“In contrast, children are, at least in some domains such as visual learning, superior in their abilities to adults.”

In future studies, the team will analyze GANA responses in other learning fields such as reading and writing.

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