Describe the key changes in adolescent information processing and cognition.

What will be an ideal response?

Students' answers may vary.Executive Function: The most important cognitive change in adolescence may be improvement in executive function, which constitutes a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the prefrontal cortex. With greater executive function comes greater engagement in goal-directed behavior and the ability to exercise more self-control. 
Memory: During adolescence, working memory-an important component of executive function-improves, helping individuals to better manipulate and assemble information in decision-making, solve problems, and comprehend written and spoken language. 
Decision-making abilities: The ability to regulate one's emotions during decision making, to remember prior decisions and their consequences, and to adapt subsequent decision making on the basis of those consequences appears to improve with age through the early adulthood years. 
Critical-thinking skills: Although adolescence is an important period in the development of critical-thinking skills, if an individual has not developed a solid basis of fundamental skills (such as literacy and math skills) during childhood, critical-thinking skills are unlikely to mature in adolescence. 
Metacognition: Adolescents develop metacognition, or thinking about thinking, which helps many perform cognitive tasks more effectively by helping them to monitor and manage cognitive responses.