Importance Of Information Processing

The information processing approach examines how individuals manipulate, monitor, and create strategies for handling information. According to this approach, children’s cognitive development comes from being able to overcome processing limitations by performing basic operations, expanding their information processing capacity, and by gaining new knowledge and strategies. From childhood to adolescence, attention, memory, and thinking are important to effective information processing.

Attention is the ability to focus mental resources. As a toddler, attention is not focused on one object or event for a very long time. As a preschooler, attention is a bit more focused, and a child might be able to watch television for a half hour. As children …show more content…
Decision making skills improve in adolescents, but they also have a tendency to be emotionally intense, which can cause poor decision making. Peer pressure along with the availability of substances and other temptation also increase the likelihood of a poor decision. One way to explain how adolescents make decisions is the dual process model. This model says that decision making is influenced by both analytical and experiential cognitive systems, which compete with each other. According to the dual processing model, the experiential system, which monitors and manages actual experiences, is the most beneficial to adolescents’ decision making. However, some experts argue that both systems are …show more content…
Information processing increases in speed, automaticity, and capacity, which frees up cognitive resources for other purposes. Adolescents also have wider content knowledge in a variety of areas, and an increased ability to put together new combinations of knowledge. They also use a greater range of strategies and procedures for gathering and applying knowledge. However, if fundamental skills are not developed in childhood, these critical thinking skills are not likely to develop sufficiently in