Some 36-year-olds choose to collect vintage wine, vinyl records or sports memorabilia. For Richard Simcott, it is languages. His itch to learn has led him to study more than 30 foreign tongues 鈥 and he鈥檚 not ready to give up.
During our conversation in a London restaurant, he reels off sentences in Spanish, Turkish and Icelandic as easily as I can name the pizza and pasta on our menu. He has learned Dutch on the streets of Rotterdam, Czech in Prague and Polish during a house share with some architects. At home, he talks to his wife in fluent Macedonian.
What鈥檚 remarkable about Simcott isn鈥檛 just the number and diversity of languages he has mastered. It鈥檚 his age. Long before grey hairs appear and waistlines expand, the mind鈥檚 cogs are meant to seize up, making it difficult to pick up any new skill, be it a language, the flute, or archery. Even if Simcott had primed his mind for new languages while at school, he should have faced a steep decline in his abilities as the years went by 鈥 yet he still devours unfamiliar grammars and strange vocabularies to a high level. 鈥淢y linguistic landscape is always changing,鈥 he says. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e school-aged, or middle-aged 鈥 I don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 a big difference.鈥
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A decade ago, few neuroscientists would have agreed that adults can rival the learning talents of children. But we needn鈥檛 be so defeatist. The mature brain, it turns out, is more supple than anyone thought. 鈥淭he idea that there鈥檚 a critical period for learning in childhood is overrated,鈥 says Gary Marcus, a psychologist at New York University. What鈥檚 more, we now understand the best techniques to accelerate knowledge and skill acquisition in adults, so can perhaps unveil a few tricks of the trade of super-learners like Simcott. Whatever you want to learn, it鈥檚 never too late to charge those grey cells.
The idea that the mind fossilises as it ages is culturally entrenched. The phrase 鈥溾 is recorded in an 18th century book of proverbs and is probably hundreds of years older.
鈥淭he idea that the mind fossilises is entrenched, but old dogs are better learners than we thought鈥
When researchers finally began to investigate the adult brain鈥檚 malleability in the 1960s, their results appeared to agree with the saying. Most insights came indirectly from studies of perception, which suggested that an individual鈥檚 visual abilities were capped at a young age. For example, restricting young animals鈥 vision for a few weeks after birth means they will never manage to see normally. The same is true for people born with cataracts or a lazy eye 鈥 repair too late, and the brain fails to use the eye properly for life. 鈥淔or a very long time, it seemed that those constraints were set in stone after that critical period,鈥 says Daphne Bavelier at the University of Rochester, New York.
These are extreme circumstances, of course, but the evidence suggested that the same neural fossilisation would stifle other kinds of learning. Many of the studies looked at language development 鈥 particularly in families of immigrants. While the children picked up new tongues with ease, their parents were still stuttering broken sentences. But if there is a critical period for foreign language learning, everyone should be affected equally; Simcott鈥檚 ability to master a host of languages should be as impossible as a dog playing the piano.
Bearing this in mind, Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, Canada, recently turned to the US census records, which detailed the linguistic skills of more than 2 million Hispanic and Chinese immigrants. A 鈥渃ritical period鈥 for learning a second language in infancy should have created a sharp difference between those who had moved country in early childhood and those who were uprooted in adolescence. In reality? 鈥淭here was absolutely no discontinuity,鈥 Bialystok says. Instead, she 鈥 which could reflect differences in environment as much as the adults鈥 rusty brain circuits. 鈥淧eople talk more slowly and clearly to children in short, simple sentences,鈥 she says. 鈥淎nd the child鈥檚 entire social and educational network is organised around that language.鈥
Yet while Bialystok鈥檚 study suggested that adult brains are more pliable than had once been imagined, there was still the suspicion that children might have the edge in certain skills. Adult learners sometimes find it harder to learn to sing in tune, hit a home run or mimic an accent convincingly. At first glance, the problem might seem to lie in adults鈥 perception and motor skills. Learning involving these abilities differs from the acquisition of factual knowledge, because it needs us to rewire the eyes, ears and muscles.
It鈥檚 something that Marcus can identify with. At the age of 38, he devoted himself to learning the guitar, an experience he detailed in his book Guitar Zero. 鈥淢y family鈥檚 initial response was laughter 鈥 but they soon saw I was making progress,鈥 he says. Still, during his research, he attended a musical summer camp for 8 to 15-year-olds. He says he was quicker to catch on to the structure of songs, but his younger bandmates had better coordination and sense of pitch.
Yet the available evidence hints that children may not always be inherently better at such tasks. One study by Yang Zhang at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis that focused on the acquisition of foreign accents in adults suggests we may simply be suffering from poor tuition. When the researchers gave them recordings that mimicked the exaggerated baby talk of cooing mothers, the adult learners progressed rapidly.
Nor do adults necessarily fumble over the intricate movements that are crucial for music or sport. When volunteers visiting 鈥榮 lab at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, learned to press keys in a certain sequence, at certain times 鈥 essentially a boiled-down version of keyboard practice 鈥 the .
During a more challenging test of hand-eye coordination, nearly 1000 volunteers of all age groups learned to juggle over a series of six training sessions. As you might expect, the senior citizens aged 60 to 80 began with some hesitation, but they soon caught up with the 30-year-olds and by the end of the trials all the than the 5 to 10-year-olds.
Old dogs, then, are much more adaptable than folklore would have it 鈥 and if we do have deficits, they aren鈥檛 insurmountable. The reason that children appear to be better learners may have more to do with their environment, and factors such as physical fitness (see 鈥Faster body, faster mind鈥).
Indeed, many researchers believe that an adult鈥檚 lifestyle may be the biggest obstacle. 鈥淎 child鈥檚 sole occupation is learning to speak and move around,鈥 says Ed Cooke, a cognitive scientist who has won many memory contests. 鈥淚f an adult had that kind of time to spend on attentive learning, I鈥檇 be very disappointed if they didn鈥檛 do a good job.鈥
鈥淎n adult鈥檚 lifestyle may be the biggest obstacle, but it needn鈥檛 be if we use the right techniques鈥
A glut of free time and a carefree existence are out of reach for most of us, but there are other behaviours that boost children鈥檚 learning, and these habits can be easily integrated into even an adult鈥檚 schedule. For example, children are continually quizzed on what they know 鈥 and for good reason: countless studies have shown that testing doubles long-term recall, outperforming all other memory tactics. Yet most adults attempting to learn new skills will rely more on self-testing which, let鈥檚 be honest, happens less often.
That鈥檚 why Cooke developed a website, called , which helps take some of the pain out of testing and, crucially, can integrate learning into the adult day. It is designed to track your learning curve with cunningly timed tests that force you to retrieve the information just as you are about to forget it.
鈥淢emrise engages your brain to the greatest possible extent,鈥 says Cooke, who has himself used the site to learn thousands of words of foreign vocabulary. Users can create their own courses 鈥 the topics range from art to zoology 鈥 and importantly, it is easy to load the site in the few spare minutes of your lunch break or while you are waiting for a train. Cooke also plans to launch a smartphone app.
What about tasks that involve perceptual learning or motor skills 鈥 like battling against a lifetime of tone deafness, or perfecting that golf swing? Here too, there are guiding principles that can help you rediscover the seemingly effortless learning of youth.
Adults can hamper progress with their own perfectionism: whereas children throw themselves into tasks, adults often agonise over the mechanics of the movements, trying to conceptualise exactly what is required. This could be one of our biggest downfalls. 鈥淎dults think so much more about what they are doing,鈥 says at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 鈥淐hildren just copy what they see.鈥
Wulf鈥檚 work over the past decade shows that you should focus on the outcome of your actions rather than the intricacies of the movements. She applies this finding in her own life: as a keen golfer, she has found it is better to think about the swing of the club, for instance, rather than the position of her hands. 鈥淚鈥檓 always trying to find where best to focus my attention,鈥 she says. Similarly, if you are learning to sing, then you should concentrate on the tone of the voice, rather than on the larynx or the placement of the tongue. Study after study shows that 鈥 perhaps by encouraging the subconscious, automatic movements that mark proficiency.
鈥淪tudy after study shows that simply shifting your mindset a certain way can accelerate learning鈥
Misplaced conscientiousness may also lead adults to rely on overly rigid practice regimes that stifle long-term learning. The adult talent for perseverance, it seems, is not always a virtue. Left to their own devices, most people segment their sessions into separate blocks 鈥 when learning basketball, for instance, they may work on each shot in turn, perhaps because they feel a desire to master it. The approach may bring rapid improvements at first, but a host of studies have found that the refined technique is soon forgotten.
Instead, you do better to take a carousel approach, quickly rotating through the different skills to be practised without lingering too long on each one. Although the reason is still unclear, it seems that jumping between skills makes your mind work a little harder when applying what you鈥檝e learned, helping you to retain the knowledge in the long term 鈥 a finding that has helped people improve in activities ranging from tennis and kayaking to pistol shooting.
Such an approach might not be to everyone鈥檚 taste 鈥 with intricate skills, it might feel like you are making no progress. But even if you do revert to stints of lengthy practice, you can still reap some of the same benefits by occasionally trying out your skills in an unfamiliar situation. In tennis, you might move to a different part of the court for a couple of serves before returning to the regular position; while playing scales on a musical instrument, you might switch hands temporarily. According to in Dortmund, Germany, venturing out of your comfort zone in this way helps to ensure that you improve your overall performance rather than confining your progress to the single task at hand. 鈥淥therwise, the longer you practise, the harder it becomes to transfer the skills that you鈥檝e learned to new situations,鈥 says Boutin.
If none of that helps you learn like a child, simply adopting the arrogance of youth may do no harm. 鈥淎s we get older, we lose our confidence, and I鈥檓 convinced that has a big impact on performance,鈥 says Wulf. To test the assumption, she recently trained a small group of people to pitch a ball. While half were given no encouragement, she offered the others a sham test, rigged to demonstrate that their abilities were above average. They learned to than those who didn鈥檛 get an ego boost.
Whether your itch to learn will ever match Simcott鈥檚 appetite for foreign languages is another matter. 鈥淲hat I do 鈥 it鈥檚 like an extreme sport. There鈥檚 no need to learn that many languages,鈥 he says. He has recently turned to Chinese, and has no plans to stop after that. 鈥淚鈥檓 like a linguistic butterfly. There鈥檚 always another, really far away, that suddenly feels appealing.鈥
Still, embrace the idea that your mind is as capable as Simcott鈥檚, and the lure of extreme learning might take hold of you too.
Faster body, faster mind
The key to a spry mind in old age may be as simple as a walk in the park.
Over the past few years, it has become clear that poor physical fitness 鈥 including factors such as obesity and cardiovascular health 鈥 can be as damaging to our brains as they are to our sex appeal, reducing the long-distance connections between neurons and shrinking the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. For this reason, the general decline in health as we age may also contribute to the gradual decrease in mental skills 鈥 including our capacity to learn new skills, fuelling the idea that you can鈥檛 teach an old dog new tricks (see main story).
Thankfully, the changes are reversible, according to Arthur Kramer, who has worked with senior citizens in his lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Typically, the studies demanded a mild exercise regime, asking volunteers to walk for 40-minute periods, 3 days a week for a year, for example. 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 say these old folks would win any races, but they could certainly go further and faster by the end,鈥 he says.
Imaging their brains before and after training, he found that hippocampi had expanded, perhaps through the growth of new brain cells or an increase in synaptic connections between neurons. Just as importantly, much of the long-distance communication across the brain was restored to its former glory. 鈥淭he senior citizens鈥 connectivity was equivalent to a 30-year-old鈥檚,鈥 says Kramer. The result is a general cognitive boost, including improved attention, which should aid learning of any new skill.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淥ld schooled鈥
