# I Hate Beatles Fans **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 28, 2011, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-beatles-fans/604334 "2011-11-28T13:12:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 168
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2011, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-beatles-fans/604334/168 "2011-11-30T16:07:34Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > I’m a bit older than 26, and I’m still finding new stuff to like. So maybe it’s you. Allow me to educate you, it is a well known psychological phenomenon that music tastes are mostly defined in young adulthood (I learned this in a psychology class): > [@](#): > > Just as there are “critical periods” for language acquisition, there appear to be critical periods for the acquisition of music listening. As children hear music, they develop neural systems -— schemas — to capture the structural and tonal regularities of that music. Beginning around age 10, as the brain’s mission shifts toward pruning out unused neural connections, musical tastes focus around the music we’re used to. At about age 12, music begins to serve a social bonding function and we use music to distinguish our social group from others: this is the kind of music people like us listen to, that music is for them. As young teens, our musical tastes are further refined by what our friends are listening to. **Most of us base our adult musical tastes on what we liked when we were 12 to16. In some cases, through effort** , we can expand our musical tastes as adults. [http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/39/01/expert/](http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/39/01/expert/) Do you think it’s just a coincidence that old people listen to what they listened to as young adults and they just happened to be born in “the best time for music eva”? :rolleyes: --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-beatles-fans/604334)._