Emergence
Beginning in the 1950s, a major change occurred in the field of Psychology that has come to be known as the Cognitive Revolution. The cognitive revolution took form as what is now known as “Cognitive Psychology”. This field of psychology had freed itself from the behaviorist views that were dominant in the 1950s. It wanted to look at the “interior” mental processes, rather than the observable “exterior” views that behaviorism held. This revolution had a huge impact on theory and research in the field of psychology, as well as many other disciplines, such as human-computer interaction, human factors and ergonomics. Overall, information-processing models helped reestablish internal thought processes as a legitimate area of scientific research.
A central metaphor that was adopted by cognitivists at this time was the computer, which served to provide these researchers important clues and directions in understanding the human brain and how it processes information. Many psychologists and researchers believe that the Information Processing Theory was influenced by computers, in that the human mind is similar to a computer. However, today the metaphor of mind as computer has faded. The analogy has many strengths, in that humans have different memory stores and information is transferred from one store to another, however it does little to actually explain how the process works and has thus diminished in popularity.
Read more about this topic: Information Processing Theory
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