Cognitive abilities are brain-based skills that develop over time and it includes mechanisms of learning, memorizing, problem-solving, and attention-paying human use to carry out tasks. Thus being said, adults are more developed in their cognitive skills and should be more apt in learning a language. However, a study by Finn et al. (2014) suggest that learning with effort hinders aspect of language learning like phonological organization of category structure but facilitates word segmentation. In addition, adult learners are also reported to be faster and more efficient in the early stages of learning and master some domains such as vocabulary better than children. This can be explained by Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development (1955), that children depend largely on their sensory experience to learn and understand. But adults are able to use their more superior cognitive ability like abstract thinking to comprehend and infer.
Children rely principally on sensory experience for reflecting and acquiring knowledge,and they understand things directly or through audio visual aids and other sensory inputs. Since adults are more cognitively mature,they are better able to use their ability of abstract thinking to comprehend knowledge indirectly and inferentially.