Brains of Children, Teenagers, and Adults Make Judgements Differently
So wow children are different to adults…
Less of the sarcasm — we could assume that some mental processes, specifically brain activation patterns, remain similar through age and simply our knowledge base increases. This research shows that is not true.
Ok, ok, what was this research?
This research by Margaret L. Schlichting et al. from the University of Texas, Austin, looked into how different people of different ages made inferences by using brain scanning to see differences.
And what did they find?
They found the brain takes very different strategies.
Let me give you an example that the researchers use: if a child is dropped off at day care by a woman in the morning and picked up by a man in the evening, adults would immediately infer that the man and woman were the parents (with no obvious conflicting information such as age discrepancies).
However, children do not automatically make this inference. They first need to compare two memories and then see what the relationship is. Put another way, adults have inferences pre-baked in. They seem so obvious to us.
And what about teenagers?
The process in adolescents was also different to children and adults. Whereas adults automatically make inferences and children need to compare two separate memories adolescents suppressed the first memory.
This seems to enable them to make more exploratory inferences than adults (you know when you teenager says “well, it could be this or that actually” in a sarcastic tone).
Ahh that explains a thing or two!
Yes, it seems to enable exploratory thinking, seeing wider possibilities, but can make teenagers frustrating to speak to!
That means we should be teaching them differently?
Indeed, there are different processes at play. We adults will assume that our process of making inferences, is the right, or logical way, but children’s and adolescents brains’ are operating differently…
Doesn’t it also show that we adults are pre-biased
Absolutely — but speak for yourself…
Now, now, less of the sarcasm!
Reference:
Margaret L. Schlichting, Katharine F. Guarino, Hannah E. Roome, Alison R. Preston.
Developmental differences in memory reactivation relate to encoding and inference in the human brain.
Nature Human Behaviour, 2021;
DOI: 10.1038/s41562–021–01206–5
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