Ever wonder why your 8 year old can’t seem to learn from his mistakes when you tell him over and over again how he’s done something wrong?

It may be because their brains simply don’t react to negative feedback as teens’ and adults’ brains do. So says recent research published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (‘Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (‘Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.

The researcher can’t say whether this is simply a function of the brain’s development itself, or a child’s experience and learning over the years (e.g., an 8 year old has significant less experience and knowledge than a 13 year old).

However, it’s valuable knowledge to understand that an 8- or 10-year-old brain might not be in the same place as an older child. And that negative feedback isn’t going to really start kicking in or working well in a child of that age until they hit age 12 or so. And of course, a study like this isn’t widely generalizable — your child may start responding to negative feedback at 10 or 9, and someone else’s child may not respond until 15 or 16.

Read the full article: Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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