Cognitive Efficiency

Cognitive psychologists often talk about the impact of cognitive efficiency on a person's performance. And we know that one of the aspects of cognition that shows impressive development across childhood is cognitive efficiency, or how quickly and accurately a person can process information. But why does this matter? Is the speed of thinking really important? While in a lot of ways, yes, it is. Remember that efficiency is not just about speed; it's also about accuracy. Being fast but won't allow won't help you solve problems. Remember things and function very well in your environment. Also, remember that According to to the information processing view of cognition, humans have a limited capacity to process information. And that's a critical concept. As soon as you have a hypothesis and a limited resource, the degree of efficiency in using that information becomes important. It's like the availability of gas for our cars. If gasoline were an unlimited resource, we wouldn't be very concerned about how fuel-efficient our cars are.