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World War II brought about a technical revolution in communication and electronics.

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Led by people such as British mathematician Alan Turing

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researchers developed mechanical computing devices to crack wartime codes and solve complex mathematical problems.

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In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists applied these ideas to the study of human behavior.

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The result is called the “cognitive revolution”

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a movement of psychologists who used ideas from computer science and other disciplines

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as a way to understand mental processes such as perceiving, remembering, and thinking.

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This change in focus had a number of pioneers, including Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist

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who in the 1930s and 1940s had studied the perceptual and cognitive errors made by children of different ages.

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One of his key works, <i>The Origins of Intelligence in Children</i>, appeared in 1952

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the same year that neuroscientists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley

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published their paper describing the action potential in neurons.

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Psychologists began to compare the brain and its component neurons to a computer and its circuits

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focusing on their common abilities to register, store, and retrieve information.

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In 1958, this led English psychologist Donald Broadbent

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to publish a book arguing that humans process information in a way analogous to computers.

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Two years earlier, George Miller had published an article on “The Magical Number Seven”

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describing limitations in many mental processes, including the number of items a person can hold in memory.

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These and many other developments expanded the definition of psychology

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to the “science of behavior and mental processes.”

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The cognitive revolution challenged behaviorism, as did a second movement called humanistic psychology

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an approach that emphasizes the positive potential of human beings.

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Psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers argued that humans were not rats or robots

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but had aspirations and capabilities far beyond those studied by behaviorists.

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In 1943 Maslow published his theory of a “hierarchy of needs"

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ranging from basic physiological needs to the highest need for self-actualization

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to describe human motivation.

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Rogers published his ideas about “client-centered therapy” in 1951

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describing it as a way to help people reach their potential to become fully-functioning persons.