What is Information processing

Information Processing

• Information processing refers to the way in which our brain deals with the information from the environment around us, our brains are constantly exposed to information from all 5 of our senses.
• Our brain ‘filters’ information by selectively attending to the important information and ignoring other less important information as the healthy brain can only process a certain amount of information at any one time i.e. when concentrating on a task when there are people chatting in the background, our brain will ‘filter’ or ignore the background chatting and focus on the task.
• Information processing is linked to all other cognitive skills and relies on speed at which a person can process and the capacity to process information.

Speed of Information Processing

• The speed at which we process information is the time it takes a person to understand and react to information presented.
• The speed at which we process information is a key element in cognitive processes.
• It is an important skill in new learning and reasoning.
• Slow processing speed may impact on executive functions, memory and new learning.
• Many daily living tasks involve automatic processing where the task has become so familiar that we are able to complete it without much conscious effort.
• Following a stroke even familiar daily living tasks require conscious thought causing patients to fatigue quicker during and following tasks, fatigue will be a factor that will adversely affect speed of processing.

Capacity for Processing

• Our brains have limited capacity and it would be impossible to remember all the information we are exposed to in any one day.
• Therefore our brain ‘filters’ the information that comes via our 5 senses and processes the important information into our short-term memory and ignores the less important information.
• Effective ‘filtering’ of information is difficult for people following a stroke and the person’s brain can get ‘overloaded’ with too much information.
• Difficulties may not be obviously apparent, however, as demands and complexity of tasks increase the person may appear confused or agitated.