Do older adults perform the same as younger adults in learning tasks?

When comparing learning competences between adults and children, one can easily point out a few obvious facts. For example, one of the differentiating factors are the physiological differences. Throughout human development, individuals go through critical periods of learning and development, they experience structural brain changes through brain maturation and their cognitive process develops over time (Paus, 2005). Differences can be clearly established among adults and children, however, can the same be said among adults? Although adults already have a mature brain, they continue to have changes in their brain structure through brain plasticity (Cajal, 1991, Garland and Howard, 2009).

While reviewing recent literature on this subject, I found that Adult Learning is usually examined through two categories (young adulthood and mature adulthood); however, in a general sense, differences in this population are rarely examined. Very often adult learning studies are carried out with populations of university students who are in their early adulthood, and the reported results tend to be generalized to the adult population in general. Regardless of the fact that several differences have already been identified among the adult population, most studies extend the reach of the results to the general adult population, even though there is a small amount of age variance in most research sampling among the adult population.

Even though changes in learning and decreased memory ability have been reported before (Zelinski & Stewart, 1998), in a recent study carried out by Derksen and colleagues (2014) it was found that learning and memory tasks among older adults were statistically indistinguishable from those of younger adults. Derksen and colleagues (2014) examined if learning through a collaborative social interaction assists older adults in overcoming age-related learning changes. This study was done with a population of 68 adults, which were divided in two groups of 34 each. These groups were to complete the Barrier Task and a clinical neuropsychological measure on memory. The Barrier Task consisted of a digital simulation where the participants use social interaction to collaborate on developing labels for a set of abstract tangrams. Participants performed the clinical neuropsychological measure on memory alone given that it did not require social collaboration to be completed. The older group performed inferior on both measures as expected by the researchers. However, the older group performed equally as well as the younger group on the Barrier Task over time. The results of this study suggest that collaborative social interaction mediates the relationship between age and learning.

This study is relevant to this Series given that it shows us that after some trials of performing learning and memory tasks, older adults can learn more effectively in collaborative social interactive models of learning. This study results interesting when contrasted with the other studies presented in this Series. Especially when considering Bandura's (1977) neo-behaviorism Social Learning Theory, which considers that learning in children occurs by observing "models" in their environment, but leaves out the important contributions of social interaction among peers. Vygotsky's (1978) theory of the Zone of Proximal Development more closely resembles the findings of the research discussed in this post, but it does not create a perfect fit given that it is also framed within an hierarchy model where there is a more capable peer that teaches, assists or guides an inferior peer to achieve a higher level task than available without the assistance. In this research, there were not any superior individuals among the older group; it was the collaborative social interaction among peers of the same level that augmented the learning and memory capabilities of the participants.

Sources and further readings:

Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cajal, S. R. (1991). Cajal's degeneration and regeneration of the nervous system. History of Neuroscience.

Derksen, B. J., Duff, M. C., Weldon, K., Zhang, J., Zamba, K. D., Tranel, D., & Denburg, N. L. (2015). Older adults catch up to younger adults on a learning and memory task that involves collaborative social interaction. Memory, 23(4), 612-624.

Garland, E. L., & Howard, M. O. (2009). Neuroplasticity, psychosocial genomics, and the biopsychosocial paradigm in the 21st century. Health & Social Work, 34(3), 191-199.

Paus, T. (2005). Mapping brain maturation and cognitive development during adolescence. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(2), 60-68.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. Readings on the development of children, 23(3), 34-41.