Symbols and Rules: In the 1950s, cognitive psychology emerged as an important new approach to the study of the mind. Information theory already had an important impact on theories of memory and attention. The idea that the mind is an information processing system akin to a computer programme began to take hold. In a neighbouring discipline, structural linguistics described language in terms of symbols (such as nouns, adjectives, verbs and prepositions) manipulated by a set of rules, just like conventional computer programming languages. Cognitive psychologists viewed information processing in the mind in terms of the same vocabulary that linguists use: The mind is a symbol manipulation machine, operating according to a well-defined set of rules. The goal of the cognitive psychologist was to discover the operating system of the mind. Scientific research involved uncovering the exact nature of the symbols and rules involved.
