Cognitive Revolution

Subsequently, psychology was dominated by the behaviourist perspective, which ignored the mind in their investigations, preferring instead to only study things that can be observed directly: Stimuli in the environment and the organism’s behavioural response.

To behaviourists, the mind was like a black box, the contents of which could not be studied empirically. Stimuli from the environment entered, and a response was produced, but how the mind translated stimulus into response was considered unknowable. Consequently, behaviourists focused exclusively on associations between stimulus and response.

Because Behaviourists avoided studying the contents of the Black Box, topics like memory remained unexplored until the so called Cognitive Revolution in psychology.