Information Processing and Executive Function in Human Development

Study Notes

The information-processing approach focuses on the ways in which humans process and remember information.
This approach has been used to study cognitive resources, attention, memory, and self-management skills in infants and children.
Adolescents are thought to have greater cognitive resources than children, and they are also able to learn and remember more complex information.
Adolescents are able to use more deliberate and selective memory strategies than children, and they are also more able to spontaneously generate new memory strategies.
Adolescents are also better able to push irrelevant information out of their working memory, which allows them to focus on more relevant information.
Executive function is an umbrella term for the cognitive processes that help us regulate, control and manage our thoughts and actions.
The key executive functions are planning, inhibition-effortful control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, attention, problem solving, monitoring of actions, and verbal reasoning.
These processes are important for infants as they learn to manage their thoughts and actions.