By {the mid twentieth century}, many scholars had pointed out the limitations of Behaviorism: behavior depends on {non-observable internal phenomena} like {memories and beliefs}, which behaviorists exclude from their experimental methods because {they’re subjective}.
Psychologists began to study these internal phenomena using the Transcendental method and ideas borrowed from computer science, eventually producing the field of Cognitive psychology and the theoretical framework of Cognitivism.
{Edward Tolman}’s 1948 rat experiments demonstrated the role of {knowledge} in behavior by {letting rats explore a maze for several days}, then testing them by {placing food in the maze}. He observed that {the rats were able to immediately find the food in the maze}, which suggests that they’d acquired a “{cognitive map}”. This contradicts Behaviorism’s theory that learning can be understood as {a change in behavior}.
B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957) claimed that language could be learned through {Operant conditioning}. {Noam Chomsky} published a scathing review, pointing out that {children produce speech they’ve never heard or been rewarded for}.
Frederic Bartlett’s experiments suggested that people interpret their experiences through mental frameworks he called “schemas.”
Computing technology inspired a wave of new psychological theories using information processing metaphors: buffers, gates, processing events, etc.
Q. What’s the significance of the Transcendental method to Cognitive psychology?
A. It resolved an important paradox: understanding behavior requires understanding internal phenomena, which can’t be directly observed.