Comments on: Vision Improvement

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:36:08 +0000

Re: Aging and Myelin Synthesis
Perception and attention are huge. I’m not convinced that the so-called limits to learning later in life have to do with a reduced physiological capability. I believe social and contextual factors are just as important or more important. Youth generally have more leisure time to actually devote to such things as sports and artistic pursuits, as compared to adults with their family responsibilities, work, community, etc. I think we also have to consider the opportunities for deep practice vs going through the motions, and the frequency of opportunity to practice. With kids, it is often long and frequent, while we adults often limit our involvement to weekly or Monday, Wednesday Friday (at best). Then there is the question of how intense the experience is. Many of us have to decompress or wind down in the first couple of days of a vacation to actually be present and leave the office behind. So what impact is that having on our attention and acquisition of a new skil during a normal working weekl? Maybe kids don’t face this barrier to the same extent. Or maybe they are better at getting into the zone through their more frequent practice. The point here is that ther is probably some threshold intensity that has to be reached to trigger the myelin response. Also, I think that mental practice is probably a significant factor. When my daughter was younger, she was very successful in competitive dance. In addition to formal sessions focused on specific corrections twice a week, she was also supposed to dedicate herself to at least a half hour of daily practice. We couldn’t get her to practice faithfully on her own at home, but then we would always hear her hopping and the little feet moving in rythem when she was in the bathroom upstairs, and eventually any time she was in a line up or waiting for someone or something. She could not keep the feet still! The point being she was practicing mentally and visually many times a day. Even when we as adults commit to learning a skill, I doubt that most of us are constantly mentally rehearsing it throughout the day, and transferring it to a willing and attentive sub-consicous that isn’t preoccupied with a million other things. There are lots of examples of people learning new skills later in life, and subject to health and accessibility to the necessary resources, I suspect that many dedicated retired folks will pick up the skill much faster than they would have in middle age prior to retirement. This would make a good study with certain novel skills and three different age groups with appropriate controls to match the groups on other factors. I’m optimistic that given sufficient opportunity, attention, motivation, corections and and practice, we too can aquire new skills and talents at a pace that will surprise us.

By: djcoyle

djcoyle — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:26:25 +0000

Good question (for most of us, it’s THE question). I think the answer has a couple dimensions.
1) It depends on the skill. Many “simple” skills — which we can think of as straightforward circuits for hitting a golf ball or leaping on ice skates — are a lot easier to build when we’re younge. So if you are aiming to be world-class, the rule is quite clear: start early, or you’re behind. Other, more complex skills, like writing, or designing, or social skills, or anything we’d think of as “wisdom” — which we can think of as vast, interconnected network-like circuits — get better with time.
2) That said, there are occasional encouraging exceptions. The golfer Y.A. Yang, for instance, who started at 18. Which raises a question: how much are those limits imposed by biology, and how much by the uphill psychology of starting “later”?
3) Most of us don’t want to be world-class. We just want to get better than we are. And when it comes to getting better, we’re all on the same path.

By: Carson Boddicker

Carson Boddicker — Wed, 19 May 2010 06:35:33 +0000

Daniel,

You frequently discuss things from the frame of childhood experiences that shaped later success, and it makes good sense biologically, but at how great of a disadvantage are those in older age brackets when myelin synthesis is less expeditious?

Regards,
Carson Boddicker

By: Daniel Bowers

Daniel Bowers — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:51:57 +0000

This entry strongly reminds me of Malcom Gladwell’s book, Blink. It talks about our subconscious talents of perception, starting with a true story of art experts who instantly detected a fake “ancient Greek” sculpture in split seconds, even though the scientific tests were fooled.

By: ScottTrader

ScottTrader — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:04:21 +0000

Ha! Have fun. It’s a really devious game! Once you get up into +100 plus landings, the planes will speed up at times and scatter wildly if not on a set course by you. Plus, once the game senses that it’s got you on the ropes it will send it many planes very quickly.

The game will sure heat up your pre-frontal cortex : )

By: djcoyle

djcoyle — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:06:44 +0000

Good suggestion — I’m downloading it now. (Look out, world — my next blog entries are going to be visionary!)

By: ScottTrader

ScottTrader — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:06:28 +0000

If you want a a good .99 cent solution, and have an iphone, then “flight Control” game is probably as good as the expensive intelligym software for this type of training. I landed 547 planes earlier this week and boy did that accomplishment make me happy : )