I will not give you a lecture on the Atkinson and Shiffrin three stage model of memory because that is something that is covered in Introduction to Psychology. If you do not feel confident about this model after reading Berk, you are invited to read my lecture on memory in my Introduction to Psychology class as a refresher. Information processing as a way of describing infant cognition is quite simple compared to Piaget. The capacity of the mental system, the amount of information that can be retained and processed at once, expands with age. It is the type of memory that you rely on when you take a multiple-choice test.
Evidence indicates that infants can organize their physical, emotional, and social worlds.
During their second year, children actively categorize items while they are playing. Again, information processing theory emphasizes continuity of the development of thinking from infancy onward. Vygotsky is mentioned in some texts and then dropped. In this text, Berk returns to Vygotsky in a variety of chapters, indicating that she understands and appreciates his theory of cognitive development. In other words, infants deprived of social interaction don't think as well or as rapidly as those who have adequate social interaction.