The Case For Experience: The more we know, the more we can learn.

Our ability to process and reason is important in learning, but as we get older, experience and prior knowledge are our best teachers. A new study conducted by Rice researcher Margaret Beier shows that while our basic reasoning skills decline with age, the knowledge and skills we acquire through experience and education can continue to grow. The more we know, the more easily we acquire new knowledge.

Quickly grasping and remembering new information becomes more difficult the older we get. While our ability to process and reason begins to decline around age 20, a new Rice study shows that acquiring new knowledge and learning new skills depends not just on how smart we are, but on what we have already learned and experienced throughout our lives.

“Knowledge acquired through education and experience isn’t just an index of what a person knows,” says Rice University psychologist Margaret Beier. “It’s also an indication of how successful an individual is at acquiring knowledge.”

Most prior studies have equated intelligence with working memory – the ability to keep something in memory while performing other tasks – or with how well a person performs abstract nonverbal reasoning tasks. But, as Beier found, narrowly defining intelligence in this way may discount a large portion of what adults know and underestimate what they can learn.

“We’re finding that what middle-aged or older adults lack in working memory or in the ability to quickly process information are supplemented by the prior knowledge and experience they’ve had in their lives, says Beier.

Beier’s findings have implications not only for defining a person’s cognitive abilities at different stages of their lives and predicting how well they might perform in certain environments, but for training and educating older learners as well.

In a study in Psychology and Aging, titled “Age, Ability, and the Role of Prior Knowledge on the Acquisition of New Domain Knowledge,” Beier and Georgia Institute of Technology psychologist Phillip Ackerman examine how adults acquire knowledge in a learning environment that takes into account individual differences in prior knowledge, intellectual abilities and age.

To replicate real-world training programs, the researchers designed both structured and unstructured learning modules covering two topics: health and technology. One module was a time-constraint video presented in the laboratory, and the other, a homework packet given to the participants to study on their own.

The video learning experience was predicted to require focused attention and such cognitive abilities as working memory, while the homework learning module mimicked a more typical learning experience, permitting the participants time to review the material at their leisure over three days. Data was collected on 199 participants, including their age, gender, level of education and an assessment of their prior knowledge and experience related to the two topics. A broad range of measures were taken to identify the participants’ cognitive ability and general knowledge and experience by way of spatial, numerical and verbal tests, as well as cultural comprehension exams, vocabulary and reading tests.

Eventually, Beier hopes to conduct research in a number of organizations with managers who are training workers between the ages of 30 and 65 years old.

“Because our intellectual abilities change as we get older, we need to have a better understanding of the types of interventions needed for older learners,” Beier concludes.

In other research related to human intelligence, Beier has worked closely with Ackerman on a number of projects examining the relationship between working memory ability and intelligence. One of those studies challenges the claim of a number of cognitive psychologists that working memory is the same as intelligence.

Beier, whose research is broadly focused on adult intellectual development, working memory and gender differences in cognition, joined Rice’s psychology department in the fall of 2004. She received her undergraduate degree from Colby College in Maine and her master’s degree in engineering psychology and Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology from Georgia Institute of Technology.

For more information at http://www.rice.edu