ArticlePerspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science2022
The Sweet Spot: When Children's Developing Abilities, Brains, and Knowledge Make Them Better Learners Than Adults.
Article in Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Offline and online de novo motor skill learning differs in young children and adults.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2026Article
- Perception of Vowel Segments by Children and Adults: A Preliminary Study of Segment Duration.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Neural correlates of learning speed reveal developmental differences in memory.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Speech in Line: A Catholic Ethical Approach in Prioritizing Children with Speech Delay or Elderly Stroke Survivors Amidst the Scarcity of Speech-Language Pathologists in the Philippines.Journal of religion and health · 2026Article
- Beyond Cognitive Load Theory: Why Learning Needs More than Memory Management.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Scientists' Warning to Humanity: The Need to Begin Teaching Critical and Systems Thinking Early in Life.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Article
- Unraveling functional neurological disorder in pediatric populations: A systematic review of diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes.World journal of clinical pediatrics · 2025Article
- Can the Components of Physical Fitness Be Linked to Creative Thinking and Fluid Intelligence in Spanish Schoolchildren?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A Multimodal Physical Program Combining Abacus Use and Exercise to Improve Motor Coordination and Flexibility in Primary School Children.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Article
- Brain-Inspired Multisensory Learning: A Systematic Review of Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Outcomes in Adult Multicultural and Second Language Acquisition.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours of Irish preschool teachers regarding the oral health of preschool children.European archives of paediatric dentistry : official journal of the European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry · 2025Article
- Differentiation in Cognitive Abilities BeyondPsychological science · 2025Article
- The role of exploration and exploitation in primate communication.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Associative learning via eyeblink conditioning differs by age from infancy to adulthood.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Children exhibit superior memory for attended but outdated information compared to adults.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Children exhibit a developmental advantage in the offline processing of a learned motor sequence.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- The Influence of Memory on Visual Perception in Infants, Children, and Adults.Cognitive science · 2023Article
- Exploratory preferences explain the human fascination for imaginary worlds in fictional stories.Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive development is marked by age-related improvements across a number of domains, as young children perform worse than their older counterparts on most tasks. However, there are cases in which young children, and even infants, outperform older children and adults. So when, and why, does being young sometimes confer an advantage? This article provides a comprehensive examination of the peculiar cases in which younger children perform better. First, we outline the specific instances in which younger is better across domains, including mastering language, using probabilistic information, detecting causal relations, remembering certain information, and even solving problems. We then examine how children's reduced cognitive abilities, ongoing brain development, more limited prior knowledge, and heightened tendency to explore benefits their learning, reasoning, perception, and memory from a mechanistic perspective. We hold that considering all of these factors together is essential for understanding the ways in which children's learning is unique and that science has much to learn from a careful consideration of childhood.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.