Information Processing

The information processing approach has generated research that illuminates how children process information during the preschool years. Attention, memory, strategies and problem solving are all very important in the information processing for children. Attention is defined as the focusing of cognitive resources. Families were observed through America to see how a toddler, compared to younger or older children, didn't spend as much time watching television. When I was a toddler I remember not being able to focus for long periods of time on one object or event. Although preschool age children don't focus on certain things, their control of attention is still deficient. For example, if a child is given a direction by a clown in a bright colored outfit, the child would pay more attention to the clown than the directions. This reminds me of when I was a child and I had a child's learning game that I played on the computer. I was more concerned about the colors and different objects on the game then I was of learning how to do what it was trying to teach me.