Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback, whereas negative feedback 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. Dr Eveline Crone and her colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab used MRI research to compare the brains of three different age groups: children of eight to nine years, children of eleven to twelve years, and adults aged between 18 and 25 years. This three-way division had never been made before; the comparison is generally made between children and adults. Crone herself was surprised at the outcome: "We had expected that the brains of eight-year-olds would function in exactly the same way as the brains of twelve-year-olds, but maybe not quite so well. Children learn the whole time, so this new knowledge can have major consequences for people wanting to teach children; how can you best relay instructions to eight and twelve-year-olds?"

The researchers gave children of both age groups and adults aged 18 to 2'a computer task while they lay in the MRI scanner. The task required them to discover rules. If they did this correctly, a tick appeared on the screen, otherwise a cross appeared. MRI scans showed which parts of the brain were activated. These surprising results set Crone thinking. "You start to think less in terms of 'good' and £ not so good'. Children of eight may well be able to learn extremely differently, only they do it in a different way."