Information Processing Approaches to Emotion

Abstract Psychological theorists typically draw on widely agreedon sets of assumptions and concepts when constructing models of psychological processes. The range of assumptions and concepts places parameters on the type of model that is generated and constitutes the scientific paradigm within which modeling occurs (Kuhn, 1962). Of course, a paradigm in psychology is neither true nor false. Rather, its worth to the discipline is a function of how fertile the paradigm is for the generation of models and of programs of empirical research to test those models. Within the broad area of cognitive psychology, the dominant paradigm is the information processing approach. Information processing psychologists conceptualize the mind as a multipurpose processing system. Mental representations, which relate to or designate structures outside themselves and ultimately relate to things in the external world, are acted on in the system by various cognitive processes (Johnson-Laird, 1993). These processes manipulate and transform the representations and give rise to the range of psychological phenomena. Different types of information processing theory instantiate mental representations within different types of cognitive architecture, such as localized or distributed connectionist systems (e.g., McClelland, 1995) or symbol processing systems (e.g., Anderson, 1992). The information processing paradigm had its genesis in the 1940s and 1950s and gathered considerable momentum from the publication of seminal texts such as Broadbent’s book, Perception and Communication (1958) and Neisser’s Cognitive Psychology (1967). Development of the paradigm in psychology has also paralleled the development of computer science, and the existence of commonalities in the information processes that are employed by computers and the mind is a strong theme that permeates recent developments in psychology (see Johnson-Laird, 1993, for a discussion). At the end of the 20th century, there was a consensus in cognitive psychology that the information processing paradigm is an appropriate and informative way to study human cognition. The enduring popularity of the information processing approach is largely a result of its successful instantiation in a range of models that cover the waterfront of cognitive psychology. The paradigm has been successfully applied to such cognitive processes as basic vision, higher level vision, attention, memory, spoken and written language, judgment, reasoning, and higher level thought (see Eysenck & Keane, 1995, for a broad introduction to cognitive psychology across these different domains). Information processing theories have been informed by a wealth of empirical data and, in turn, have generated a host of testable predictions.