Cognitive Psychology

The Cognitive Revolution

The Cognitive Revolution of the 1950s and 60s shifted psychology back to internal mental processes like memory and perception. Behaviorism had treated the mind as an unobservable black box, a methodological choice rather than a denial of internal states. Science simply required observable data until new tools like reaction-time measures changed that.

A turning point was Noam Chomsky's 1959 critique of Skinner, showing children acquire language too creatively for mere reinforcement.

The information-processing model views the mind like a computer that encodes, stored, and retrieved data. George Miller proposed short-term memory limits via The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. Ulric Neisser's 1967 textbook named the field.

Memory Limits and Stages

Short-term memory is strictly bounded:

$$\text{Short-Term Capacity} \approx 7 \pm 2 \text{ items}$$

Exceeding this limit causes information loss. Jean Piaget mapped cognitive growth through four distinct developmental stages:

Cognitive psychology measures these hidden mental operations scientifically, replacing mere observation with rigorous testing of internal structures.