The information processing approach to cognitive development explains cognitive growth not through qualitative stage transitions (Piaget) but through quantitative improvements in basic processing mechanisms: increases in processing speed, working memory capacity, and executive function efficiency. Robert Kail demonstrated that processing speed increases exponentially throughout childhood and adolescence, following the same mathematical function across diverse tasks. These improvements in basic mechanisms enable increasingly complex cognitive operations.
Key Changes
Processing speed approximately doubles from age 5 to adulthood. Working memory capacity increases from approximately 2 items at age 5 to 4-5 items in adulthood. Encoding and retrieval strategies become more efficient and deliberate. Executive functions — inhibition, shifting, and updating — show protracted development through adolescence, reflecting the slow maturation of the prefrontal cortex.
Neo-Piagetian theories (Robbie Case, Kurt Fischer, Graeme Halford) bridge Piaget's stage theory and the information processing approach. They retain the idea of qualitative developmental stages but explain stage transitions through increases in working memory capacity and processing efficiency rather than through general logical structures. As WM capacity grows, children can coordinate more dimensions of a problem simultaneously, enabling qualitatively more complex reasoning.