Does the Ability to Learn Decrease With Age?

Check out this answer from Consensus:

The ability to learn does not uniformly decrease with age. While certain cognitive and motor skills do decline, others remain stable or even improve. Educational attainment and lifelong experience play significant roles in shaping cognitive abilities across the lifespan. Understanding these nuances can help in developing strategies to maintain and enhance learning abilities in older adults.

The question of whether the ability to learn decreases with age is a complex one, involving various cognitive and motor skills. While it is commonly believed that aging leads to a decline in learning abilities, recent research suggests a more nuanced picture. This article reviews the current literature on the impact of aging on different types of learning, including cognitive, procedural, and motor skills.

Cognitive Learning and Aging

Cognitive abilities, such as memory and executive functions, are crucial for learning new information. Research indicates that certain cognitive abilities do decline with age, particularly those related to memory and speed of processing. For instance, older adults often show slower cognitive processing, which can interfere with their ability to complete tasks efficiently7. However, not all cognitive functions decline uniformly. Some aspects of attention and executive functions may even improve with age due to lifelong experience8.

Educational Attainment and Cognitive Function

Educational attainment has been shown to have a positive effect on cognitive function throughout adulthood. Individuals with higher levels of education tend to have better cognitive abilities and a lower risk of dementia in later life. However, the relationship between education and cognitive decline is complex. While education improves cognitive skills in early adulthood, it does not significantly attenuate age-related cognitive declines3.

Procedural Learning and Aging

Procedural learning, which involves acquiring new skills through practice, shows a different pattern. Older adults can still acquire new procedural skills, although the efficiency of learning may vary. For example, older adults have been found to perform as well as younger adults in learning bimanual motor sequences, although they may require more time to achieve the same level of proficiency4. Interestingly, older adults may even show superior skill acquisition in certain tasks compared to younger adults, although their ability to consolidate these skills over time may be poorer2.

Motor Skill Learning

Motor skill learning, which involves the acquisition of new motor tasks, also shows age-related differences. Older adults often experience declines in motor learning abilities, particularly in the encoding and consolidation stages. They are more susceptible to memory interference and show reduced off-line gains in motor skill learning6. However, the ability to transfer learned skills to new tasks appears to be less affected by age5.

Face Learning and Aging

One intriguing finding is that certain cognitive abilities, such as face learning, may peak later in life. Research has shown that the ability to learn new faces improves until just after age 30, suggesting that some cognitive functions may mature later than others1. This indicates that the aging process is not uniformly detrimental to all types of learning.

 

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Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Laura Ward has answered Uncertain

An expert from University of Glasgow in Psychology, Public Health

Yes and no, our brain’s neurons are regularly ‘edited’ with a focus of what’s important for that individual at that time. For example, when we are babies we have the ability to learn any language to communicate – including the various clicking noises made by indigenous tribes. After some time in each culture being exposed to a certain language(s) a certain amount of pruning occurs wherein we lose this ability if it’s not relevant to us. In older ages our brain changes in terms of the structure, the amount of grey/white matter changes as we age there is structural loss, similarly there is a reduced amount of blood flow in the brain. Ageing is often associated with cognitive decline and memory loss, however there are still many unknowns and older aged adults are often able to learn new spatial information e.g. moving house to a new layout. The science around healthy ageing is growing as we learn more about taking good care of our bodies and brains can help us age well.

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Evandro Fei Fang has answered Likely

An expert from University of Oslo in Anti-Ageing, Alzheimer’s Disease

Yes. The ability to learn is largely dependent on the brain health which is deteriorated with ageing. Studies from laboratories animals provide evidence.

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Gavin Brown has answered Likely

An expert from University of Auckland in Education, Psychometrics, Statistics

Maybe yes. Of course there are always individual exceptions to any general rule. With that in mind, fluid intelligence, which allows us to rapidly process and problem solve in novel and dynamic situations, tends to decline in humans from the mid to late 20s. On the other hand, crystalised abilities don’t normally tail off well until the 60s. That means while older adults may struggle with novelties in the environment (flashing video player clocks, anyone?), there greater store of structured coherent knowledge allows them to function effectively. They have abilities into which new knowledge can be structured—it’s why older and wiser people with knowledge of the past add value to decision making. They are able to learn well despite not having fluid abilities as they used to. Very good summary of this research in Deary, I. J. (2001). Intelligence: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: OUP.

Nonetheless, as the human body and brain age there will be an impact on mental functioning. Lord Robert Winston provided good advice on how to keep the mind active, alert, and learning in his book: Winston, R. (2003). The human mind and how to make the most of it. London: Bantam. So keep doing those puzzles to keep your brain alert, eat fish, keep physically active, and you’ll probably keep learning no matter how old you are.

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Michael Thomas has answered Likely

An expert from Birkbeck, University of London in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Intelligence

Broadly, adults are better learners than children in the classroom. They pay attention better, they can follow instructions, respond to explicit feedback, and follow strategies. However, children seem more effective at consolidating knowledge between lessons, particularly for implicitly learned content. For the adult, each next lesson has to start by recapping what went before, while children seem to be continuously learning. Adults also may need more practice of a skill for it to become automatic, and the older you start learning, maybe the lower the ultimate level of proficiency you can achieve (e.g., in a motor skill). That is, I can learn to play tennis aged 40, and after a while, my backhand may be half decent, but I’m never going to win Wimbledon. In general, the brain has lifelong plasticity. However, there are a few areas where there are ‘sensitive periods’, that is, you need to start young to have high skill levels. These mainly apply to low level perceptual and motor skills (e.g., learning to hear and speak as a native in a given language), and not cognitive skills (you can always learn new ideas). In sum, it’s never too late to learn, but earlier is generally better.

Here’s a paper where we looked at the evidence on this: http://www7.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/dnl/old_site/personalpages/Knowland_and_Thomas_2014.pdf.

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Chanawee Hirunpattarasilp has answered Likely

An expert from HRH Princess Chulabhorn College of Medical Science in Neuroscience

The ability to learn decreases with age. This can be easily seen in learning a second language. After the age of 7, learning a new language becomes more difficult. This may be related by the fact that the brain regions processing the second language are distinctly different from the those of the first language. In contrast, early bilinguals process both languages in the same area.

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Alan S. Kaufman has answered Likely

An expert from Yale University in Intelligence, Education

A vast body of research shows clearly and crisply that the ability to deal with novelty and solve new problems peaks in the late teens and early 20s before beginning to descend rapidly in middle age, and continue to fall dramatically with increasing age, continuing to plunge when a person is in their 80s and 90s. This declining ability is often called fluid intelligence. 

By contrast, the ability to accumulate knowledge, whether in school or by other cultural experiences, increases with age until a person is in their 60s (when level of education is controlled), and doesn’t start declining until age 75. 

That means that whether learning decreases with age depends on the person’s FAMILIARITY with the material to be learned. 

If it is something NOVEL, then the ability to learn the new material, or the new skill, will decrease dramatically with increasing age. If it is FAMILIAR then there will be no decrease in learning ability with age, and there may well be an increase. 

Consider learning to play the violin at age 25 and age 65. Let us suppose that NEITHER person had ever been taught any musical instrument, either self-taught or via music lessons. In that instance, the average 25-year-old will learn the violin much more quickly than the average 65-year-old. 

Now let us suppose that BOTH individuals had learned an instrument, perhaps the piano or guitar, when they were younger. Then the rate of learning a familiar task would probably be about equal, on average. 

But what if the 65-year-old had been taught an instrument as a youth or young adult, whereas the 25-year-old never had any formal or informal musical training? In that case, the older, experienced person will learn much more quickly than the novice, on average. 

And this generalization about the relationship between learning ability and age extends well beyond learning a musical instrument. The same principle applies as well to chess, learning a new language, golf, taking a course in art history or opera, delivering an invited lecture, or almost any learning task one might think of. 

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Yousef Khalifa Aleghfeli has answered Uncertain

An expert from Oxford University in Education

Learning occurs differently with age, depending on the individual. While neural connections occur at a faster rate in earlier years, it is often misinterpreted as ‘learning occurs faster in earlier years’. The human ability to learn is an adaptive one; meaning, it can adapt to changing circumstances, both physiologically and environmentally. That is why we still find older-aged individuals who are successful at learning a language or a musical instrument. This understanding is the basis for adult education as a field of academic study and professional practice.

 

Does the ability to learn decrease with age?

Marvin Formosa has answered Uncertain

An expert from University of Malta in Gerontology

Who has not heard of the old adage ‘old dogs cannot learn new tricks!’. Is this true? Does the ability to learn decrease with age? Some aspects of learning ability suffer with ageing. Other aspects of learning actually improve considerably. The crux here is separating the chaff from the wheat. However, this is far from a straightforward matter. The process of learning is embedded in various contexts ranging from the cognitive to the social to the relational to the spatial. Hence, it is far from easy to separate what contributes to improved or worsening learning abilities as we grow older since increasing birthdays may be the least contributing variable to such developments next to social crises, personal tribulations, health complications and environmental changes. A definite answer of the effect of age on people’s cognitive development is near to impossible to attain. Whilst intellectual ability varies extensively from one person to another, the variations from research study to study in content and methodology make absolute comparisons unworkable. Yet, it is clear that barring physiological and psychological impediments people can and do have the ability to continue learning well into extreme old age. Indeed, older persons actually possess a number of compensatory factors – such as the integrity of crystallised intelligence, the accumulation of knowledge and experience, the persistence of curiosity, and the ability to put new information in a highly meaningful context – which may even give older learners an edge over younger peers. After all, recent research has demonstrated clearly that even persons living with dementia do not lose the propensity for learning new skills and knowledge. Hence, the answers to this question are yes and no, maybe, it varies, it depends on what type of learning abilities are we looking at, are we referring to formal or informal learning. As with the whole oeuvre of social science issues, there can never be a completely and definitely affirmative or negative answer.