Can anyone differentiate between age and maturity ?

Age is a hard number that reveals how long ago you were born. Maturity is subjective to the content of what is being measured.

I know kids in their late teens with more maturity than some people I know in their fiftys.

Age is nothing more that not dying. Maturity is taking responsibility for one’s life and one’s actions.

I don’t think maturity has anything to do with age….it all depends on your own intellect, how you were brought up, your sense of humor, what you’ve done in life, which connects to your perspective on everything. I’m 14, and I traveled to Australia, Italy and Greece without my parents a few years ago…part of a student program. I think I’d be more immature if I hadn’t done that – it broadened my sense and perspective on the world.

And by the way, I like your profile picture @Saman ahaa.

@babybadger: thankyou :)
i m 23, the part of the world where i reside, unfortunately people dont get enough chances or can say that they dont really risk to learn and experience new things which can result in adding to their maturity..
the kids of ur age .. are hardly even sent to their schools alone .. they are like kept in a shell and they have to follow other’s shadows to grow in their life

Neurologically speaking, most of the attributes we include in the notion of “maturity”, e.g. self-control, empathy, reasoned behavior, planning and persisting toward goals, etc., are centered in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t mature until around the mid-twenties, so one typically doesn’t have all of the hardware needed for maturity until that age.

The development of the PFC occurs mostly between the ages of 19 and 25. The more the PFC is exercised during this period, the stronger its influence over the more primitive brain systems that govern childhood behavior will become. Some development of the PFC can occur beyond the mid-twenties, but it’s much more difficult.

But that’s the “hardware” side of maturity. There’s also the effect that life experience has on how we approach life and our relations with others, the “software” of maturity. Hopefully, we learn through trial and error what works and what doesn’t, what matters and what’s fluff, what consequences to expect from what actions. That process is completely open-ended, or at least until one decides he has it all figured out (tragically common, alas). Someone who has been through a wide variety of experiences early in life, including dealing with challenging situations, will acquire more of this experiential data at a younger age. But if the neural hardware is underdeveloped, then that experience may not be put to effective use.

Maturity is directly related to age as a loose rule, but like most loose rules, there are outliers. Many young people who have experienced things that people don’t usually experience until they are older are more mature than average. The reverse is also true. ;)

You cannot choose how old you are, with time you will get older undoubtedly. Whether you mature or not is entirely up to you, it is a conscious choice (and change).

@Saman What we call emotional intelligence is the ability of the PFC to regulate the impulses of the limbic system, the emotion centers of the brain. When the senses forward information to the brain, the thalamus routes that information to the appropriate areas for processing. If the content is emotionally significant, a signal first goes to the amygdala, part of the limbic system. A second signal will go to the neocortex , which includes the PFC. So the limbic system has the first shot at reacting to emotionally charged situations, and it can trigger an unreasoned chain reaction before the PFC can even weigh in on the matter. This is the case, for instance, with people who just blurt out whatever they feel like saying without regard for the consequences.

In a mature person, the neural pathways between the PFC and the limbic system are more robust, and so the PFC has a stronger voice in restraining the limbic system. It runs models of possible outcomes based on experience and can override impulses that would likely lead to bad outcomes.

So strictly speaking, deficiency in emotional intelligence doesn’t affect PFC development. It would be more accurate to say that deficiency in emotional intelligence is a symptom of an underdeveloped PFC or one that is poorly connected to the limbic system. I can’t comment on how all this relates to more clinical conditions like autism.

I do think that there is potential to improve PFC executive function beyond age 25. We keep finding more and more evidence that the brain is capable of development much longer than we used to think. But progress certainly comes much slower beyond the formative years.

I would have to say that age is stateing the number of years since you’ve you’ve been born and maturity is like a state of mind. some one that is say for example 50 but acts like an 18 year old isn’t considered mature.