Do children learn faster than adults?

It has been argued that development of the human prefrontal cortex results in a functional fixedness. The argument goes that there is a learning phase followed by a performance phase, children then learn more easily than adults do. IF this is true and IF it is useful then A.s.a. might also benefit from a phase where learning (training) is emphasized followed by a phase where performance is emphasized. This can be accomplished by using one set of thresholds (i.e. the learning rate, threshold for case extrapolation, etc.) while learning a casebase and then using other thresholds when the agent is deployed.