The Cognitive Revolution: How Science Discovered the Mind

The cognitive revolution was a major mid-20th-century shift after decades of behaviorism’s dominance that brought mental processes like perception, memory, language, and problem-solving, back into the center of psychology.  Researchers began explaining behavior through internal representations and information processing, instead of treating the mind as a “black box,”, helping launch modern cognitive psychology and the interdisciplinary field now called cognitive science.

This huge shift in approach from behaviorism is known as Cognitive Revolution, and it gave rise to the many domains of cognitive psychology that we use today. This article explains what sparked the cognitive revolution, the major domains of cognitive psychology and why cognitive processes matter in daily life. Psychology was dominated by behaviorism, before the 1950s, which focused only on visible behavior and not on thoughts. When psychologists began to study the mind as an active information-processing system everything about psychology change.

Cognitive Revolution Points:

• What was the Cognitive Revolution?  A shift during the 1950s–1960s from only through observable actions to explaining it through thinking and information processing to explaining behavior. 
• What is replaced? Strict behaviorism was replaced because they weren’t directly observable, which avoided mental explanations. 
• What changed? Cognitive psychologists began studying internal representations, memory systems, attention, language structure, and decision-making. 
• Why it happened: To study cognition and to explain real human behavior Big ideas in linguistics, computing, and neuroscience made it clear psychology was needed. 
• Key figures: Noam Chomsky, George A. Miller, Jerome Bruner, later Ulric Neisser. 
• Big outcome: The foundation for modern cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, AI-inspired models of the mind, and later cognitive therapies.

A Historical Perspective

George A. Miller (Psychologist) said that cognitive science was a “child of the 1950s,” born when multiple disciplines like psychology, anthropology, and linguistics were redefining themselves, while computer science and neuroscience were emerging as major forces. 

He also argues that by restoring cognition to scientific respectability, psychology couldn’t fully join the movement until it “freed itself from behaviorism”. 

Why the Cognitive Revolution Happened?

1) Behaviorism hit the ceiling:

• Behaviorism struggled to explain higher-order phenomena like language productivity, complex reasoning, and flexible problem-solving although it helped psychology become more rigorous. 
• In psychology, Miller characterizes the cognitive revolution as a counter-revolution to the earlier “behavioral revolution.” 

2) Language forced the mind back into science

• The most famous pressure point was “language”. Via reinforcement histories, behaviorism, especially Skinner's approach, attempted to explain language primarily. 
• Chomsky’s critique argued that people produce and understand novel sentences constantly and this couldn’t account for the structure and creativity of human language. 
• One of the triggers that accelerated the shift away from Skinnerian explanations of complex cognition was Britannica highlights Chomsky’s 1959 review. 

3) The computer metaphor made cognition “modelable”

• Computing did not just add tools, it added a new way to think about thinking: input to internal representation to  processing to  output. 
• That “information-processing” framing made mental processes not mystical and feel testable and scientific.
• Applying Shannon-style information theory directly to psychological processes, Miller also describes his own early attempts and frustrations, which pushed him toward richer cognitive explanations, especially in language.

4) Interdisciplinary collaboration became unavoidable

A core theme in Miller’s account is that different fields realized their problems couldn’t be solved in isolation—psychology needed linguistics, linguistics needed computation, neuroscience needed theory, and so on. Collaboration wasn’t optional anymore. 

Key Events and Milestones: 

• 1950s: Cognition re-enters the lab and researchers begin moving from pure stimulus–response accounts toward models involving memory systems, internal codes, and linguistic structure. 

• 1956: This year was the AI “founding moment” at Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (1956) and is widely treated as a foundational event for AI.  Because AI and cognitive psychology grew together, it’s frequently linked to the cognitive revolution and each borrowing ideas about representation, problem-solving, and computation. 

• 1959:  Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior became a symbolic turning point in the debate over whether behaviorism could explain language and other complex mental abilities. 

• Late 1960s:  “Cognitive psychology” became a named field under Ulric Neisser’s 1967 book. It is often treated as a milestone that helped crystallize the field’s identity. 

How Psychology Shifted Focus to the Mind?

During the 1950s–1970s the Cognitive Revolution transformed psychology. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner argued, before this period: “The mind is a black box. Only behavior can be studied scientifically.” But scientists from fields of psychology, neuroscience and linguistics challenged this idea.

The revolution started when psychologists started realizing:

• The brain processes information in the same manner as a computer.
• Some of the mental processes can be scientifically measured.
• Without understanding, thinking behavior cannot be understood.
• Only by stimuli and response, language cannot be explained.
• Active encoding, storing, and retrieval is a part of memory.

The Cognitive Revolution with scientific methods brought together the study of mind, thought, and internal mental functions back into psychology.

Key Players of the Cognitive Revolution:

Because of the following breakthroughs, Cognitive psychology became a scientific discipline.

Core Ideas of the Cognitive Revolution: 

1) Mind contains internal representations

Cognitive approaches describe internal mental structures like schemas, rules and models that shape perception, memory, and decision-making. Instead of viewing behavior as only a learned reaction.

2) Humans process information

The mind is studied as an information-processing system. Especially in tasks involving language, reasoning, and planning. The mind encodes inputs, transforms them, stores them, retrieves them, and uses them to generate behavior. 

3) Cognition is scientifically testable

While restoring the “mind.” and keeping “science”, the Cognitive psychologists use experiments. To infer mental processes from performance pattern's reaction times, errors, recall curves and priming effects.

Criticisms and Limits:

• Not all cognition is “computer-like.” In ways that simple information-processing metaphors can miss, human cognition is embodied, emotional, and socially shaped.
• Behaviorism did not disappear, and behavioral learning principles remain central in many areas. Modern psychology often blends behavioral methods with cognitive explanations rather than treating them as enemies.

Other topics that you might read:

1. Cognitive Biases: How are we tricked to misjudge?
2. Cognitive Distortions: How the Brain Tricks Itself? 
3. Bruner Theory of Cognitive Development 
4. Cognitive Polarity: The Battle of Extremes Inside the Human Brain
5. Cognitive Behavioral Dissonance: Conflict Between Thoughts and Actions
6. Domains of Cognitive Psychology and the Cognitive Revolution
7. What is Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory?

FAQs

What is the cognitive revolution in psychology?

It’s the mid-20th-century shift away toward studying internal mental processes like memory, attention, language, and reasoning from explaining behavior only through observable stimulus–response patterns. 

When did the cognitive revolution happen?

With major accelerators including the rise of computing/AI and debates about language and behaviorism, most accounts center on the 1950s and 1960s.

Why was Chomsky important to the cognitive revolution?

His critique of behaviorist explanations of language became a major intellectual shock to support the idea that language requires structured mental mechanisms and strict behaviorism. 

How did AI influence the cognitive revolution?

The founding moment of AI is the 1956 Dartmouth workshop. AI supplied models and metaphors for cognition representation, computation, and problem-solving.