Information-Processing Approach

The information-processing approach provides additional information about
these child/adolescent contrasts. According to John Flavell, cognitive growth
is the acquisition of increasingly sophisticated and efficient problem-solving
skills. For example, adolescents can hold more information in memory than
children, which enhances their ability to solve complex problems. Improvements
in memory reflect more than changes in capacity. Adolescents are
better able to develop associations between words and ideas, which in turn
facilitates remembering them. Part of their improvement is a result of the
fact that adolescents know more than children. Adolescents also are better
able to think abstractly and develop hypotheses. These skills in part reflect
improvements in generalization, identifying similarities between previous
situations and new ones. Changes in thinking and hypothesizing also enable
adolescents to generate a wider variety of problem-solving strategies, which
enhances their performance. Finally, adolescents know more about the nature
of thought and memory. This metacognition, or ability to “think about
thinking,” increases the planning in their problem-solving behavior.


Information-processing research has helped explain some of the inconsistencies
that appear in Piagetian research. According to Piagetian theory,
people are located within particular cognitive stages and will reason at those
levels of maturity in all problem-solving situations. Why, then, do most people
show features of several stages, depending on the type of problem presented?
According to information-processing research, variability in performance
across different problem types is to be expected. The more one
knows, the easier it is to use efficient cognitive processes. People will appear
more cognitively mature performing tasks about which they are knowledgeable.