Do Children and Adults Learn Differently?

Abstract

This article addresses a question that was a topic of debate in the middle decades of the 20th century but was then abandoned as interest in children's learning declined. The question is, does learning develop? In other words, does the learning process itself undergo age-related change, or does it remain invariant ontogenetically and phylogenetically, as early learning theories claimed? We suggest that new conceptions of learning make the question worth revisiting. A study is presented of 11- to 12-year-old children and young adults engaged in an identical learning task. Results support the proposal that learning comes to operate under increasing executive control in the years between middle childhood and early adulthood.