EMBRACING THE COMPLEXITY OF INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN COGNITION - STUDYING GOOD INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND HOW IT MIGHT DEVELOP

The good information processing perspective is that cognitive performa nce is a product of strategies, nonstrategic knowledge, metacognition, motivation, and short-term capacity. To date, the perspective is supp orted (a) by quantitative studies establishing that strategic function ing depends on nonstrategic knowledge, metacognition, motivational bel iefs, and capacity; as well as (b) by qualitative investigations demon strating that effective strategies instruction includes teaching of st rategies and simultaneous development of nonstrategic knowledge, metac ognition, and supportive motivational beliefs; and (c) think-aloud ana lyses revealing the use of strategies, filtering of new information th rough prior knowledge, and generation of on-line metacognition through monitoring-with motivation definitely high. An important next directi on is to develop a model of change: That is, how do not-so-good inform ation processors become good information processors?