Why is it important for teenagers to learn from their actions?

Imagine that you are at a carnival and want to win a big stuffed toy. You play different games and if you are successful, you collect tickets. But what's important to you is not the tickets themselves, but the big toy they can buy.

And you'll probably stick to the easier games to earn as many tickets as possible.

The experience can be called intentional learning, says Juliet Davidow, an assistant professor of psychology at Northeastern University.

"You experience something and then you learn from that experience, whether it's good or bad," she says. “It guides you, helping you decide whether you want to repeat the experience again.”

Davidow, director of the Learning and Brain Development Laboratory at Northeastern University, recently conducted a detailed review of a variety of scientific experiments to determine how well scientists understand goal-directed learning in adolescents. She was able to highlight findings that may be useful for teenagers today. These findings were published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Over the past 20 to 30 years, Davidow says, research on brain development has largely focused on the challenges and risks of adolescence—the period from about 10 to 20 years—rather than looking at the power and purpose of adolescence itself.

“What gets lost in the science is how many benefits this stage of life actually has,” she says. “This is an incredible time for growth, for understanding who you are, what is important to you and what kind of adult you want to be in this world.”

After the first decade of life, children still have a lot to learn before they become adults, Davidow says. Purposeful learning is one of the central processes occurring during this period, she says.

Adolescents learn to perform activities that allow them to achieve desired results, such as playing easier carnival games. It's gradual, experimental, trial-and-error learning, Davidow says.

Historically, purposeful learning included skills such as hunting, gathering and childcare, she says. But today the brain must face the modern world and the current sociocultural climate.

Modern goal-directed learning involves more abstract behaviors, Davidow says, such as clicking and swiping to produce music that evokes desired emotions.

Teenagers learn faster than adults, especially if they are learning something that is important to them rather than what they are told to study.

Motivation is a big part of purposeful learning. For this to work, the goal must be desirable, says Davidow.

And a good result encourages people to repeat the activity again.

"The brain says, 'Oh, you walked up to the candy machine, you pressed a button, and the candy fell out. Try pressing that button again,'" Davidow says.

Besides motivation, surprise is another important part of the learning process.

“If you do something and the result is unexpected, your brain will grab that information and try to do something with it,” says Davidow.

But in order to be surprised, a person must first have an expectation, she says, otherwise he cannot be surprised.

When something doesn't go as expected, the brain tries to understand why. This creates a cascade of targeted learning, says Davidow.

This way, for example, parents or teachers can ask the child what they think will happen before the child tries something.

“If the outcome is unexpected, it will enhance learning,” says Davidow.

Sometimes parents think their teens are seeking out risky experiences that could lead to bad outcomes, she says.

“But maybe they're just looking for new experiences,” says Davidow.

“They look for experiences, and the ones they find often turn out to be risky and dangerous.”

Instead, she says, adults can create situations that allow teens to safely explore—for example, sending them into the woods with supervision.

“If kids don’t try things, they’ll never get into that positive cycle,” says Davidow. “They won’t learn that trying new things is fun or makes their brains happier.”