Learning is enhanced by tailoring instruction to individual genetic differences

Some people do better at school than others, and some of this difference comes down to genes. But do genes place fixed limits on an individual's academic potential? Or is it possible to increase or decrease the impact of genes by changing how a person is taught? One possibility is that individuals learn best in different ways, and that tailoring instruction to suit individual learning styles could improve learning outcomes. But despite widespread interest in this idea, testing it systematically has proven challenging. Mets and Brainard have therefore taken a new approach by testing the idea in a songbird called the Bengalese finch. Birdsong is a complex behavior learned in a similar way to human speech. Young birds listen to a tutor song – usually that of their father – and learn to mimic it through trial and error. But some songbirds learn better than others. By swapping eggs between nests, Mets and Brainard show that genetic offspring often learn the father’s song more accurately than birds fostered in from another nest. This might be because the father and offspring share genetic characteristics that contribute to the sound of the father’s song. Birds with the same genes will thus find it easier to learn the same song. Alternatively, it could be that father birds spend more time teaching their genetic offspring than young they have fostered. To control for this possibility, Mets and Brainard played computer-generated songs to juvenile birds from different nests that had all been raised by non-singing females. Some of the songs had a fast tempo, others were slow, and a third set were in between. The results showed that juveniles learned most successfully when the training song had a similar tempo to their father’s song. This was true even though none of the birds had ever heard their father sing. The findings thus suggest that tailoring instruction to suit an individual's natural learning tendencies – which depend on their genes – can enhance learning. Without knowing about this effect, it would be easy to assume that some of the songbirds in the current study were simply poorer learners than others. But in fact, optimizing instruction for each individual’s genetic background reduced the differences between individuals. If learning in humans is similar to vocal learning in birds, there could be broad implications for education.