Let’s talk a little about how our brains and how they learn new information. The brain functions in two ways in terms of learning: Receptors and Expressers. Receptors receive the constant stream of information around us and help us filter that information. Young children brains spend most of their time receiving information about the world around them, in fact the first year of life the brain learns 50% of everything it will learn in a lifetime. The receiving of this information helps create neuro-pathways in the brain to organize the information and make sense of daily activities.The first 3 years of a persons life are critical for development of these neuro-pathways and sets the foundation for learning later in life.
Once the receptors have received and organized information, the brain then takes on the second challenge of using the information it has received, through the expressers. The expressers allow us to take the information we have received and use it appropriately. While an adult brain has a very sophisticated system of neuro-pathways (think of them like a big city freeway system), which allows them to quickly access received information and express it appropriately,a young child’s brain is still developing neuro-pathways (think of them like a new development road way) and therefore it takes them longer to express the received information. This phenomenon is called Delayed Reaction.
Delayed reaction is basically the time it takes for us to express the information we receive. Depending on the previous experiences we have with the information we are receiving the reaction time will vary. For an adult, who has years of previous learning and experiences, they can quickly express new information learned because their neuro-pathways are well developed. Using the freeway analogy, the information travels at a high speed down the freeway and knows the fastest exit to take to arrive at the destination needed to use the information.
A child’s brain, on the other hand, does not have the same years of experience so it travels at a much slower speed on the newly developed roads, or may even need to build some new roads for the information to travel on. It takes the information much longer to reach its destination. Depending on the age of the child and the information received the delayed reaction can take minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months!
I find this information really helps me keep in perspective what to expect from the young children in my dance classes. It is not uncommon from me to hear from a parent that their child who spends much of the initial classes in a session watching rather than actively participating will go home and recite the lyrics to a favorite song or start demonstrating a dance skill learned at that class. This is a normal part of the delayed reaction response. The child’s brain spent much of the class receiving information and processing it. The brain continue to busily organize this information after class. Once at home, in a familiar environment, the child suddenly bursts into song or dance, finally able to express that received information. Voila! Delayed Reaction!
The more information is presented and used, the faster the brain becomes at expressing the information. This is one of the reasons I encourage parents to engage in activities done in class once as week at home, so their child is getting more opportunities to use and master the information. But that takes us to our next post: Repetition, repetition, repetition is good!