The information-processing view of cognition seeks to find out how children and adults operate on different kinds of information. Most information-processing theorists view the mind as a complex, symbol-manipulating system through which information flows, much like a computer. Two general models of adult information processing have influenced research on children's cognition. Atkinson and Shiffrin's store model assumes that information is held, or stored, in three parts of the system for processing: the sensory register, short-term memory, and long-term memory. The levels-of-processing model assumes that transfer of information from working to long-term memory depends on the depth to which information is processed.

Several developmental models of information processing exist. Case's theory reinterprets Piaget's theory within an information-processing framework. He views cognitive development as a matter of increases in information-processing capacity that result from brain development and more efficient strategy use. Connectionism tries to explain development by means of computer-simulated learning tasks, using large numbers of interconnected, simple processing units, which are organized in layers, much like the brain's neurological structure. Siegler's model of strategy choice suggests that children generate a variety of strategies for solving challenging problems; with experience, some strategies are selected and survive, whereas others die off.

Attention is fundamental to human thinking, since it determines the information that will be considered in any task. Attention improves greatly during early and middle childhood, becoming more selective, adaptable, and planful. Improved cognitive inhibition and effectiveness of attentional strategies are important for the refinement of selective attention. Refinement of attentional strategies occurs in four phases: production deficiency, control deficiency, utilization deficiency, and effective strategy use.

Memory strategies also improve with age as children gradually develop a variety of techniques--such as rehearsal, organization, and elaboration--to increase the likelihood of holding information in working memory and transferring it to the long-term knowledge base. During infancy, retrieval changes from recognition of previously experienced stimuli to include recall in the presence of few retrieval cues or none at all beyond the context in which the information was previously experienced. Over childhood and adolescence, recall improves steadily as the knowledge base becomes better organized and memory strategies are applied more effectively.

When people are given complex, meaningful material to remember, condensations, additions, and distortions appear that are not just the result of memory failure but due to a radical transformation of the information-a process called reconstruction. Fuzzy-trace theory suggests that when we first encode information, we reconstruct it automatically, creating both a vague, fuzzy version that preserves essential content without details, and a verbatim version adapted for answering questions about specifics.

Children's metacognitive knowledge changes from a passive to an active, constructive view of mental functioning as awareness of cognitive capacities, strategies for processing information, and task variables expands. Cognitive self-regulation develops slowly during childhood and adolescence. Recently, information-processing researchers have turned their attention to children's academic learning.

A major strength of the information-processing approach is its explicitness and precision in breaking down complex cognitive performance into its separate elements so each can be studied. However, by analyzing cognition into its components, information processing has had difficulty putting them back together into a broad, comprehensive theory of development. Also, computer models of cognitive processing do not reflect the richness of real-life learning experiences. Another shortcoming is the slowness of information-processing research to respond to the growing interest in the biological bases of cognitive development.