Information Processing Theories: Higher Order Thinking

According to Bruning et al. (2004), there is a debate in U.S. education as to whether schools should teach students what to think or how to think. Critical thinking, or a detailed examination of beliefs, courses of action, and evidence, involves teaching children how to think. The purpose of critical thinking is to evaluate information in ways that help us make informed decisions. Critical thinking involves better understanding a problem through gathering, evaluating, and selecting information, and also by considering many possible solutions. Ennis (1987) identified several skills useful in critical thinking. These include: Analyzing arguments, clarifying information, judging the credibility of a source, making value judgments, and deciding on an action. Metacognition is essential to critical thinking because it allows us to reflect on the information as we make decisions.

Metacognition

As children mature through middle and late childhood and into adolescence, they have a better understanding of how well they are performing a task and the level of difficulty of a task. As they become more realistic about their abilities, they can adapt studying strategies to meet those needs. Young children spend as much time on an unimportant aspect of a problem as they do on the main point, while older children start to learn to prioritize and gauge what is significant and what is not. As a result, they develop metacognition. Metacognition refers to the knowledge we have about our own thinking and our ability to use this awareness to regulate our own cognitive processes (Bruning et al., 2004).

Metacognition evolves with a child’s development. For example, in early childhood, metacognition allows a child to reflect on a behavior that made them feel guilty, dwell on how nervous they are around others, and consider the way a friend’s struggle makes them feel. As they move into middle childhood, children begin to understand that they may need to reread a paragraph if they didn’t understand it after the first reading. They also show a grasp of metamemory, an understanding of how memory works (Kvavilashvili & Ford, 2022). For example, they recognize that it is easier to remember short lists than long lists and that they have involuntary memories (memories they can retrieve with no deliberate effort). Younger children tend to think they are better at a task than they are and that they have better memories than they possess, but the ability to accurately evaluate their cognitive skill continues to improve into adolescence. Then again, adults often struggle with these same issues! Moving into adolescence, metacognition allows teens to think in a more complex manner. Individuals can take a moment to pause and form a plan for approaching a problem, selectively choosing the strategy that might work, and monitoring progress toward a solution. They can also decide how much to rely on their own decisions and learning or the advice and learning of others (Paulus et al., 2013). For example, an adolescent’s ability to determine whether they will remember something at a later time is greatly improved, as well as the ability to predict someone else’s learning and memory of the material, especially if they’ve tried learning the same material already. The adolescent’s growing awareness and regulation of their own cognitive abilities and understanding of others’ thinking make for a nearly mature thinker.