{"id":15827,"date":"2024-02-06T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=15827"},"modified":"2024-04-01T10:50:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T18:50:18","slug":"learning-rate-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/06\/learning-rate-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Everyone Learn at the Same Rate? An Intriguing Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I wrote a defense<\/a> of psychologist John Carroll<\/a>\u2019s claim that what separated stronger and weaker students wasn\u2019t a fundamental difference in learning potential<\/em>, but a difference in learning rate<\/em>. Some people learn faster and others more slowly, but provided the right environment, essentially anyone can learn anything.<\/p>\n

In arguing that, I primarily wanted to dispute the common belief that talent sets hard limits on the skill and knowledge you can eventually develop. Not everyone could become a doctor, physicist or artist, the reasoning goes, because some people will hit a limit on how much they can learn.<\/p>\n

However, in arguing that the primary difference between students was learning rate, I may have also been committing an error!<\/p>\n

A recent paper<\/a> I encountered suggests that the rate of learning among students doesn\u2019t actually differ all that much. Instead, what differs mostly between students is their prior knowledge.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cAn Astonishing Regularity\u201d<\/h2>\n
\nListen to this article<\/small>
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