This morning we spoke about the experience of learning or starting to learn something new as older adults and the questiion came up, if or how learning changes throughout a lifetime. One class member assumed, as do many, that it gets slower with age. But is that necessarily true or just one of those negative assumptions associated with aging.
Aging is something you can, unfortunately, experience only once in your life and I admit, it is a process I am observing closely. And I try to be honest. Assumptions about automatic deteriorations due to aging have always irritated me – to say the least. They can be self-fulfilling prophesies. But I also don’t want to fool myself.
The question is quite difficult to answer. There seem to be certain correlations between bodily changes and other phenomena. The easiest area to assess this is probably athletic prowess. I used to be quite a fast sprinter and I would never deny that aging legs get slower. We can see in track and field that top sprinters can keep their speed up into their mid-thirties, but not much longer.
Speed correlates with training intensity. If you don’t sprint, or train sprinting you can’t run fast. The longer I keep up my sprint training regimen, the longer I can keep up a fairly high speed – relative to my age.
Science says there are spurts of physical changes due to age. The first is around 35, which would correlate with professional athletes experience; the second around 60 (which correlates with some of my experiences) and a third around 75. This would mean aging is not a constant ongoing process. The passage of time sometimes is just that: the passage of time.
I started learning the guitar intensively around 50. Like many in my age group – the so-called boomers – I had a guitar as a teenager, got it for my confirmation, but never had lessons. I learned a few open chords, a little fingerpicking and then didn’t touch the guitar for decades.
When I came back to the instrument, I decided to learn it from scratch. Everything, including music theory. And I was quite astonished about what I had not been taught in school. The structures of scales and chords, triads etc. The notes on the fretboard and the CAGED system. I found all interesting and fascinating. And I would carefully claim that these kind of things are probably easier to understand as an adult with a lot of academic experience. The difference between things you can explain and things you cannot for instance. And accepting the inexplicable.
I remember math lessons in which I despaired because no one was willing or able to explain to me WHY something was the way it was.Having taught a lot in insurance companies, I also had quite a few mathmaticians among my groups. It lies in my nature to develop an interest in everything that interests others. So, needless to say, I bought some books about mathematics and took a look at the tremendously long and complex wikipedia entry.
My favorite book was Steven Strogatz’s The Joy of X. In the chapter on negative roots he describes how the task deemed impossible to solve with the numerical system available – roots of negative numbers – was eventually solved by inventing what was called an imaginary number. I felt deceived by all math teachers I had ever had who always seemed to claim everything in math to be logical and if I didn’t understand I was just too stupid. (I now know that ‘logic’ is just one field of mathematics, and the meaning of what we call logical in everyday life is more often than not opinion.)
Back to my guitar journey. Was it harder to learn at my age of 50plus? Was I slower than I would have been as a teenager or kid. I don’t know. I didn’t learn an instrument intensively at that age. Is it harder for me to memorize song lyrics. Sometimes I feel so. But learning a new text by heart has always taken some effort. I would not believe anybody who claimed they knew a song’s text after listening to it once.
When I can’t remember the beginning of a verse after having listened to the song dozen of times, I sometimes think it might have been easier in the past. But how would I know; I didn’t do it because I didn’t have to. And when I learned stuff at the university for tests and exams I do remember spending a lot of time and effort doing so; mainly because I was so nervous, I had difficulties concentrating. Later in life, when I read something that really interested me, I could tell others about it after one reading. I could put things into context. Everything you can link up with what you have already read, thought about or studied intensively sticks easier.
There is a lot of individuality when it comes to learning. The issue is complex and there are no easy answers. Skill learning that involves dexterity might be easier when you are younger. I do not know. Intellectual endeavours like learning a new language or any new subject depend on learning strategies and learning experience. What we can probably say for sure is that any general claims to what supposedly happens when you age belong into the area of myths.