Why is the ability of children to learn better than adults? - Informal Article

New research shows that elementary school children can learn more in a given period of time than adults because they have better learning abilities than adults. According to United Press International, scientists have long wondered why children seem to learn any knowledge or skill faster than adults. A new study recently helped answer this question and attributed this difference to a decrease in the amount of a brain chemical called GABA, or GABA. An amino acid present in the system that reduces the ability of nerve cells to make chemical connections or receive, create, or send chemical messages.

Experts say that the amount of this chemical remains constant in adults, but increases in children when they are learning a new task or skill. While in adults, there is no decrease in the amount of this substance during learning. According to this study published in the journal "Current Biology", the amount of amino acid (GABA Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid) increases rapidly during visual training in children, which diverts their attention from all other things, resulting in them Can focus on something new and learn it quickly.

Brown University's Ta Kyo Watanabe, a lead member of the research team, told a journal that children were often assumed to learn any task more efficiently than adults. Although there is no substantial scientific evidence to support this hypothesis, even if it is true, it is not clear how the nervous system works to improve learning performance in children. To understand this problem, his team involved 13 elementary school-aged children and 14 adults in an experiment that allowed them to learn something new while observing their behavior while their State-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques were used to evaluate the nervous system.

The researchers found that while learning anything visually, the amount of Gaba acid in the visual part of the brain that processes any visual information in children increased rapidly. According to a report published in Current Biology, the experts based on these findings predicted that the amount of GABA in children increases rapidly during learning anything new that remains connected to these specific nerve cells. Temporarily inhibits nerve cells which in turn helps them to focus on a given task and they can learn that task faster. They attributed this improvement to a difference in the amount of GABA acid. They say that this increase in acid levels persists even after training ends. A member of the research team and then associated with the University of Regensburg in Germany, Saba Steinfrank, says that other experiments later supported the findings that children have a better ability to learn than adults and that Therefore, our results indicate that GABA plays an important role in improving learning performance in children.

The researchers say the findings should encourage teachers and parents to give children more opportunities to learn new skills, whether they're learning math facts or learning words. Although children's brains are not fully developed and their understanding and behavior are generally not as developed as adults, they do not perform better than adults in these areas, says Taqiu and Nabe. But on the contrary, their ability to learn visual knowledge or visual skills is better than adults in some cases. They say more research is needed to determine the differences in the rate of maturation between different parts of the brain and their functions. Further research should include an examination of the effects of GABA on other types of learning processes, such as reading and writing.