When a child is born, its nervous system is basically blank, ready to absorb whatever comes in. There are of course genetically prewired programs of behavior, but there is also an incredible potential for learning. As we get older we acquire a set of skills that develops based on our experiences and it was believed for a long time that past a certain age this couldn’t be changed. In the last few decades it has been proven wrong.
It is now known that the natural decrease in learning capacity we thought to be true is actually not exactly accurate. Even though as we get older it does decrease in some way, it does not mean that we should stop learning altogether. The means are important though because not every learning process is efficient. Children, with their strategies for learning that occur naturally can be a great source for us to take an example from.
Probably one of the most powerful ways of learning is by actually doing new things by trial and error. If you watch a small child that has just learnt basic human patterns like crawling or walking, you can see that what they actually do is just try different ways to approach the issue. They try different ways to get up, to place their hands and feet, to organize the torso, etc. If you really think about it – adults are only efficient at such skills as walking because they have been practicing them for many years. Any skill is basically a collection of references, so when you have made millions of steps – of course you don’t fall over that often, because you use the response to each situation using information from the huge buffer of previous references, whilst newly born children are just creating experience for themselves, each time exploring new ways to function until they find the most efficient one. From there, the repetition takes place, where the pattern that seemed to work well gets repeated over and over again, creating new references to pull from. There is a similar situation in learning absolutely any other skill as an adult, but for some reason we do not consider it to be an option, discharging any possibility for learning past a certain age. You once could not walk, either, now you can, isn’t it a miracle? It can be applied to literally anything, but as we get older we are too worried about being fools in other people’s eyes, I think it is a huge error. In order to be stronger you first need to feel weak, in order to be smarter you first need to feel stupid – this way you find your “blind spots”. Trial and error is a very effective way of learning, and besides the rewarding feeling of fulfilling your curiosity, there have also been studies conducted that have proven it to be even more efficient even in the older adults than errorless learning strategies. (Cyr, A.-A., Anderson, N. D., 2012) It has been shown that trial and error learning provides an advantage to transfer the skill learned during the acquisition task to a new task. By comparing successful attempts with unsuccessful ones, a subject of learning creates a better framework for more efficient application of the skill learned in different situations.
Another common innate way of learning is through observation and copying others. Imitation is the strategy we apply as small children without even being conscious about it. Our parents’ behavior is our first guideline to how to approach the world around us. When we grow older, for the sake of social engagement, we constantly copy others to some degree. It is usually not considered such a great thing to be doing, but it can be a great tool for learning if used consciously. In 1988, a study by iberius RG and Sackin HD.Motor showed, using the example of medical students who were watching the procedures they needed to perform further on during training, that it is a very important source of learning for them. “The data garnered from this study indicated that students regarded learning by observation as a useful, even valuable, experience. The data also suggested that the effectiveness of this learning experience was derived from a shared sense of immediate, emotionally charged, highly interactive participation in the proceedings, and that the teacher's catalytic function was essential to this process.”
Imagery and observation of others performing a certain skill is also widely used in sports performance. Both techniques have been proven to have an effect on our neural mechanisms - inducing activity in motor-learning related brain areas (Mizuguchi N, Kanosue K, 2017). When the observation itself has a temporal effect on it, imitation consolidates the learning. In the age of the internet, when we have videos of anything available at any moment, it can be used as a very powerful tool to learn new skills. Watching other people perform specific activities activates so called mirror neurons, which correspond to the same neurons that are activated when you actually perform this action yourself. (Molenberghs, Cunnington & Mattingley, 2012) So observation is widely accepted as a suitable mechanism for actual learning and should be applied when you are interested in self-education.
Even though learning is never easy, it is very rewarding, so here are different strategies that can be applied in order to organize efficiently a learning process: (I will cite 6 possible options suggested by Y. Weinstein, C. Radan and M. Sumeracki):
Spaced practice: spreading activities over time. Blocking off time of studying different subjects through multiple days and hours in a long period of time.
Interleaving: switching topics while studying. Combining subjects in different orders each time while studying, noting different ways of connecting between them.
Retrieval practice: bringing up related information from long term memory.
Elaboration: asking and explaining how things actually work in detail.
Using concrete examples: when learning abstract concepts, illustrating them with specific situations or visual images associated.
Dual coding: combining words with visuals.
The techniques listed above are usually applied in classrooms when scheduling the course of a study process but can also be advised as effective means for self-organized learning. Of course nothing can be compared with having a physical person giving an immediate feedback and creating a process for learning based on methodology that has been tested on others and by tracking the progress of the individual, but it is also important to take your own responsibility and learn actively, not solely relying on someone else. Because a teacher is only an intermediate between the knowledge and you. Nothing of real value can be taught to anyone, it can be only learned by oneself.