Learning From Mistakes Only Works After Age 12, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2008) — Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') 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.

According to this study, there's a radical shift in how a child learns between the ages of 8 and 12. For game developers, this makes it harder to accurately position games for the "6 to 14" market, since there are two distinct types of thought there.

Pretty interesting.