A doctrine that we commonly hear working in any organization is "You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks". How to talk about this myth, is it false or true? Do the learning abilities decrease as one gets older? There is a simple answer "No" to this complex question.
Relation between Age and learning ability is not always inversely proportional. Learning can be halted at any age, but anyone who keeps learning stays young. There must be a limit for learning ability but a saga that some memory loss occurs when someone is getting older is an exaggerated fact. Age can't be a hindrance for people to learn new methods and techniques. A widespread ambiance held in number of organizations around the world is that older employees are resistant to change, inflexible, unwilling to adopt any new method and defiant to be trained as compared to their younger corresponding persons. But according to a research point of view, this perception is more than wrong.
Organics
It is evident, that older workers (50 and above) are forced to be less confident about their learning abilities due to certain social stress. It seems that older workers are somewhat less efficient in taking challenges, average on acquiring complex and demanding skills and much slower in sorting out problems and giving solutions. That is why they need more time to be trained. But once they are trained they prove to be a better asset than their counterparts for the company as they are proficient in transferring their experience and knowledge to the job.
Wisdom is defined as accumulated learning; knowledge, better insight and better judgment capability are qualities that can be gained well through experience with time. Age actually develops some rational abilities such as outlines for better solutions and expert knowledge. Being old does not always mean to be wiser or have a better degree of insight, but a person must have accumulation of certain qualities that can be gained only through experience of living and learning. This ability to acquire knowledge, skills and capability to perform up to a certain mark is called "Trainability". A number of individual characteristics such as less motivation and low ability to cope up with challenging environment have been found to hamper learning and its further conclusions. However, age has not been found a cause to influence these outcomes. In fact, older age brings more experience. Still, the stereotypes exist.
The Relation Between Age and Learning Ability
William King is the director of India Wholesale Suppliers and UAE Dubai Directory. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.