What if young people's much-lauded adaptablilty is simply, they haven't learned Anything yet so accept the 1st model they come across? That makes them appear adaptable, yet are no more adaptable than older members of society.
I think to change anything substantially, you have to wait for a complete turnover - everybody has to die off, before the seeds of change can take root.
If that would be the only thing going on, you wouldn't be seeing a drastic decline in the ability to memorize new information that isn't tied to complex models of the world, such as sequences of random numbers, in aging people.
Again, cognitive decline in the aged is taking it a step further.
Young people (< 20yrs?) are purportedly more adaptable than older folks, say 20-50. I maintain they aren't really adaptive, they simply have more choices when they learn their first pattern. And they have many patterns to learn, which takes years, perpetuating the myth that they are adaptable.
Teaching a 22 year old PHD student or a 22 year old collage dropout a brand new skill does not favor the dropout. However, there is a fair amount of research that link rates of learning with biological age. With critical time periods that favor specific types of skill acquisition with significant benefits. What's interesting is ~25 years old is one of those cut of periods AND education tends to end at about that age.
PS: There is also trade offs involved which probably provided evolutionary benefits to those cutoff ages.
Perhaps cause and effect are reversed. Measuring young people, many whom are college students shows they stop learning when they leave college - not surprising.
Neuroscience researchers are a little more rigorous than your giving credit for.
When they want to test learning they find people that don't know something, teach it to them, and test them at all points in the process. They also don't limit themselves to a single type of skill and can measure improvement based on how much they improve over time to measure long term skills acquisition.
Hm. "Don't know something" is not a rigourous state at all. Associations are how we know something; older students have more of them.
Unless they limit themselves to reflex action or some such, it becomes impossible to separate previous learning of anything complex.
I think I give researchers plenty of credit. But they don't often have the time/resources to have many/any controls. When a remarkable correlation appears (like 'students stop learning about when they leave school') I call foul.
I think to change anything substantially, you have to wait for a complete turnover - everybody has to die off, before the seeds of change can take root.