The study claims that the learning strategy for both age-groups is quite different. While 8-year old kids learn from positive feedback, it’s the negative feedback that helps 12 yr old children in learning, and the same goes for adults, but a little more efficiently. 12 yr olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more effectively.
Behavioural research has shown the switch in learning strategy, which shows that 8 yr-olds respond disproportionately and inaccurately to negative feedback.Learning from mistakes is more complex than carrying on in the same way as before. You have to ask yourself what precisely went wrong and how it was possible.
Developmental psychologist Eveline Crone and her colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab used fMRI research to discover a similar switch in the brain. The difference can be observed particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for cognitive control,which are located in the cerebral cortex.
The researchers gave children of both age groups and adults aged 18 to 25 a computer task while they lay in the MRI scanner. The task required them to discover rules. If they did this correctly, a tick appeared on the screen, otherwise a cross appeared. MRI scans showed which parts of the brain were activated.In 8 and 9 yr olds, these areas of the brain reacted strongly to positive feedback and scarcely responded at all to negative feedback. But in 12 and 13 yr olds, and also in adults, the case was quite opposite.
Their ‘control centres’ in the brain were more strongly activated by negative feedback and much less by positive feedback.
Hopefully, with this study, parents and children can expect a stronger and a shorter bridge between each other.
DNA Agencies (DNA)
Monday, September 29, 2008 23:58 IST
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