In the 1960's a new paradigm in experimental psychology emerged: "Information Processing". Many psychologist had become dissatisfied with behaviorism's narrow definition of psychology, which had excluded considerations concerning mental. The growing availability of computers led to a new metaphor for the mind, the mind as a 'processor of information'. Experimental psychologists began designing experiments to create models of with how the mind processes information, models that closely resemble 'flow charts' of computer software. It is not to surprising that science, having invented a machine in an attempt to replicate human thought, consequently began to wonder if that machine might shed light on how people really do think.
Definition of psychology: The study of the processing of information from the time it reaches our senses to the time we respond to it.
Method of study: The information processing approach recognized how much had been gained when behaviorism discarded introspection in favor of studying observable behavior. The method of study continued to involve the measuring of observable behavior. In the information processing approach, however, the data were used to develop and test models of how the stimuli were being processed internally by the subject.
As a paradigm information processing was influenced by structuralism's and functionalism's interest in conscious experience, functionalism's focus on thinking as a process, and behaviorism's reliance on observable behavior.