Your psychology lesson is misplaced. I know my usage before and after, and it's a minor delta. The bulk of my Emacs usage today is using features that have been in my config since prior to my learning Elisp.
If we're going to be patronizing here: Most people who learn Elisp early into their Emacs experience are failing at identifying the source of their growing expertise, and are incorrectly attributing it to their knowledge of Elisp, when in reality they are merely becoming better Emacs users due to repetitive practice.
They also have a habit of reinventing solutions that are readily available within Emacs, or as a package.
I'm not trying to snub you nor am I arguing with you - my opinions are just that - I never said they are fundamentally true for everyone. Similarly, your experiences are yours - it would be wrong to generalize based solely on that data. There was no "schooling" here, the phenomenon mentioned fits this case perfectly, I just thought someone might be interested to learn more about it, that's all. Cheers to you, friend.