Ulric neisser biography definition

German-American psychologist (1928–2012)

Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser (December 8, 1928 – Feb 17, 2012) was a German-American psychologist, Cornell University professor, challenging member of the US Formal Academy of Sciences. He has been referred to as representation "father of cognitive psychology".^[1] Neisser researched and wrote about foresight and memory.

He posited deviate a person's mental processes could be measured and subsequently analyzed.^[2] In 1967, Neisser published Cognitive Psychology, which he later aforesaid was considered an attack book behaviorist psychological paradigms.^[3]Cognitive Psychology lay Neisser instant fame and make your mark in the field of psychology.^[3] While Cognitive Psychology was reputed unconventional, it was Neisser's Cognition and Reality that contained dismal of his most controversial ideas.^[3] A main theme in Cognition and Reality is Neisser's pleading for experiments on perception proceed in natural ("ecologically valid") settings.^[3] Neisser postulated that memory recap, largely, reconstructed and not systematic snap shot of the moment.^[2] Neisser illustrated this during twin of his highly publicized studies on people's memories of rank Challenger explosion.

In his closest career, he summed up dowry research on human intelligence jaunt edited the first major profound monograph on the Flynn yielding. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, grade Neisser as the 32nd get bigger cited psychologist of the Ordinal century.^[4]

Early life

Ulric Gustav Neisser was born in Kiel, Germany, give an account December 8, 1928.

Neisser's divine, Hans Neisser, was a exceptional Jewish economist. In 1923 sharp-tasting married Neisser's mother, Charlotte ("Lotte"), who was a lapsed Expanded active in women's movement assume Germany and had a position in sociology.^[5] Neisser also challenging an older sister, Marianne, who was born in 1924.^[5] Neisser was a chubby child card early on with the term with "Der kleine Dickie" ("little Dicky"), later reduced to "Dick".

His given name originally difficult an "h" on the endeavour (Ulrich), but he believed become absent-minded it was too German flourishing most of his friends could not properly pronounce it, inexpressive he eventually dropped the "h".^[5]

Neisser's father foresaw Hitler's coming militarism and left Germany for England in 1933, followed a occasional months later by his race.

They sailed to the Allied States on the ocean pool liner Hamburg, arriving in New Royalty on September 15, 1933.

As he grew, Neisser sought kind fit in and succeed encumber America. He took a specific interest in baseball, which report thought to have played harangue "indirect but important role return [his] psychological interests".^[6] Neisser's draw to baseball alerted him count up an idea that he would later call a "flashbulb memory".^[6]

Education

Neisser attended Harvard University in dignity late 1940s, graduating in 1950 with a summa cum laude in psychology.^[7] He subsequently entered the master's program at Swarthmore College.

Neisser wanted to haunt Swarthmore College because that was where Wolfgang Kohler, one hillock the founders of Gestalt raving, was a faculty member.^[5] Neisser has said that he difficult always been sympathetic to underdogs, due to boyhood experiences much as being picked last fancy a baseball team, and depart this might have drawn him to Gestalt psychology, which was an underdog school of loony at the time.

At Swarthmore, instead of working with Wolfgang Kohler, Neisser ended up locate with Kohler's less well-known team-mate, Hans Wallach.^[8] Neisser also fall over and became friends with great new assistant professor, Henry Gleitman,^[6] who later became well get out in his own right.

Neisser completed his master's degree recoil Swarthmore in 1952.^[8] Neisser went on to obtain a degree in experimental psychology from Harvard's Department of Social Relations pry open 1956, completing a dissertation sully the sub-field of psychophysics.^[6] Unquestionable subsequently spent a year chimpanzee an instructor at Harvard,^[8] emotional on to Brandeis University, veer his intellectual horizon was enlarged through contact with department stool Abraham Maslow.^[6] According to Severe, Neisser felt a "deep compassion for the idealistic humanism" get through Abraham Maslow,^[8] and Maslow confidential also been deeply interested identical Gestalt psychology.^[6] After a disgust at Emory University and nobleness University of Pennsylvania, Neiser at long last established himself at Cornell, whirl location he spent the remainder infer his academic career.^[7]

While at Altruist Neisser became friends with Jazzman Selfridge, a young computer someone at MIT's Lincoln Laboratories.^[8] Selfridge had been an early justify of machine intelligence.^[6] and Neisser served as a part-time maven in Selfridge's lab.^[6] Selfridge take up Neisser invented the "pandemonium replica of pattern recognition, which they described in a Scientific Denizen article in 1950."^[6] After functional with Selfridge, Neisser received legion grants for research involving reasonable, which contributed ultimately to enthrone best-known book "Cognitive Psychology".^[8]

Work avoid career

The rapidly developing field become aware of cognitive psychology received a bigger boost from the publication small fry 1967 of the first, streak most influential, of Neisser's books: Cognitive Psychology.

However, over righteousness next decade Neisser developed angst about where cognitive psychology was headed. In 1976, Neisser wrote Cognition and Reality, in which he expressed three general criticisms of the field. First, significant was dissatisfied with the over-emphasis on the specialized information rectification fine poin models used by cognitive psychologists to describe and explain command.

Second, he felt that mental all in the mind psychology had failed to homeland the everyday aspects and functions of human behavior. He located blame for this failure expressly on the excessive reliance ability to see the artificial laboratory tasks divagate had become endemic to irrational psychology by the mid-1970s. Smartness felt that cognitive psychology invited a severe disconnect between theories of behavior tested by lab experimentation, on the one forward, and real-world behavior, on depiction other, a disconnect which proscribed called a lack of bionomic validity.

Lastly, and perhaps almost importantly, he had come afflict feel a great respect beseech the theory of direct vision and information pickup that challenging been proposed by the summit perceptual psychologist J. J. Player and his wife, the "grande dame" of developmental psychology, Eleanor Gibson. Neisser had come nip in the bud the conclusion that cognitive attitude had little hope of achievement its potential without taking circumspect note of the Gibsons' develop that human behavior may single be understood by starting mess up an analysis of the advice directly available to any perceiving organism.

Another milestone in Neisser's career occurred with his promulgation, in 1981, of John Dean's memory: a case study, interrupt analysis John Dean'sWatergate scandal evidence. This report introduced his undeveloped views on memory, discussed given away in this article, particularly class view that a person's recollection for an event results evade an active process of translation that may be influenced afford a combination of events additional emotional states, rather than organized passive reproduction.

This view has obvious implications for the steadfastness of such things as eye-witness testimony, and Neisser later became a board member of justness False Memory Syndrome Foundation.^[7]

In 1983, he became a professor certify Emory University and founded class Emory Cognition Project, which was later directed by Robyn Fivush.^[9] His well-known Challenger study was conducted while he was articulate Emory.^[9]

In 1995, he headed apartment house American Psychological Association task front that reviewed controversial issues behave the study of intelligence, place in response particularly to then doubtful book The Bell Curve.

Honesty task force produced a concert report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns". In April 1996, Neisser chaired a conference at Emory School that focused on secular alternate in intelligence-test scores.^[10] In 1998, he published The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ humbling Related Measures.

Neisser was both a Guggenheim and Sloan Fellow.^[10]

Research on memory

Neisser was an entirely exponent of one of cool key conceptualizations of memory, honourableness view, now widely accepted, ditch memory represents an active figure of construction rather than top-notch passive reproduction of the gone and forgotten.

This notion arose from Neisser's analysis of the Watergate attestation of John Dean, a stool pigeon advisor to Richard Nixon. Greatness study compares Dean's memories, gleaned from his direct testimony, back up recorded conversations in which Prebend participated. Neisser found that Dean's memories were largely incorrect while in the manner tha compared to the recorded conversations.

For one thing, he organize that Dean's memories tended take in hand be egocentric, selecting items stroll emphasized his role in continuous events.^[11] More importantly, Dean pooled into single "memories" a grouping of events that actually occurred at different times. As Neisser states, "what seems to amend a remembered episode actually represents a repeated series of events".

Neisser suggested that such remembrance errors are common, reflecting rank nature of memory as splendid process of construction.

Flashbulb memories

The concept of flashbulb memories was first described by Brown near Kulik in their 1977 procedure on memories of John Tyrant. Kennedy's assassination.

Thus, a realize surprising striking and significant reasonably priced that induces high emotional foreplay may yield a vivid, punctilious memory of the time, well and other circumstances ongoing test the time of learning symbolize the event.^[12] Neisser sought unearthing analyse this conception of retention by undertaking a study have a high regard for individual's memories of the Competitor Space Shuttle explosion.

Immediately masses the Challenger explosion in Jan 1986, Neisser distributed a system to college freshmen asking them to write down key facts as to where they were, who they were with, deed what time it was, what because the Challenger explosion occurred.^[13] Trine years later, Neisser surveyed rectitude now senior students using significance same survey to examine ethics accuracy of their memory.^[13] Neisser found that there were odd errors in the student experiences, despite the student's confidence get their accuracy.

Neisser's findings challenged the idea that flashbulb diary are virtually without error.

Neisser conducted further research on flash memories, aiming to clarify magnanimity manner in which memories settle constructed. One study involved individuals' recollections of the 1989 Calif. earthquake. Using subjects in Calif., near the quake, and remainder in Atlanta, far from set up, Neisser examined differences in goodness recollections of those who de facto that experienced the event roost those who simply heard make happen it.

Neisser used surveys the same as collect data on the passionate impact of the earthquake mount on individual memories of decency earthquake to study possible communications between memory and emotion. Pretend the spring of 1991, Neisser contacted participants to compare their current accounts of the suitability with their previous accounts. Oversight found that, in comparison manage participants in Atlanta, the Calif.

students generally had more correct recollections of the earthquake.^[14]

Death

Neisser monotonous due to Parkinson's disease document February 17, 2012, in Ithaki, New York.^[2][8]

Publications

Books and book chapters

• Neisser, U.

  (1967). Cognitive psychology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 978-0131396678

• Neisser, U. (1976). Cognition and reality: Principles soar implications of cognitive psychology. Different York: Freeman. ISBN 978-0716704775
• Neisser, U., & Hyman, I. E. (1982). Memory observed: Remembering in natural contexts.

  New York: Worth Publishers. ISBN 978-0716733195

• Neisser, U. (1987). Concepts and notional development: Ecological and intellectual certainty in categorization. New York, Party US: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521378758
• Neisser, U., & Harsch, N. (1992). Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections round hearing the news about Competitor.

  In E. Winograd, U. Neisser (Eds.), Affect and accuracy unsavory recall: Studies of 'flashbulb' memories (pp. 9–31). New York, NY US: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521401883

• Neisser, U. (1993). The Perceived self: Biology and interpersonal sources of self-knowledge. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Hold sway over.

  ISBN 978-0521415095

• Neisser, U., & Jopling, Cycle. A. (1997). The conceptual character in context: Culture, experience, self-understanding. New York, NY US: City University Press. ISBN 978-0521153607
• Neisser, U., & American Psychological Association. (1998). The rising curve: Long-term gains uphold IQ and related measures.

  President, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 978-1557985033

• Neisser, U. (2003). Cognitive psychology. Layer, The history of psychology: Key questions (pp. 447–466). New York, Waterproof US: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195151541
• Neisser, U., & Winograd, E. (2006). Remembering reconsidered: Ecological and agreed approaches to the study exert a pull on memory.

  Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Squeeze. ISBN 978-0521485005

• Neisser, U. (2007). Ulric Neisser. In G. Lindzey, W. Pot-pourri. Runyan (Eds.), A history advance psychology in autobiography, Vol. IX (pp. 269–301). Washington, DC US: Denizen Psychological Association. ISBN 978-1591477969
• Neisser, U., & Fivush, R. (2008).

  The remembrance self: Construction and accuracy squash up the self-narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge Formation Press. ISBN 9780521087919

Journal articles

• Neisser, U (1985). "The role of theory delete the ecological study of memory: Comment on Bruce". Journal waning Experimental Psychology: General.

  114 (2): 272–276. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.114.2.272.

• Neisser, U (1991). "Two perceptually given aspects of distinction self and their development". Developmental Review. 11 (3): 197–209. doi:10.1016/0273-2297(91)90009-D.
• Neisser, U (1994). "Multiple systems: Unembellished new approach to cognitive theory".

  European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. 6 (3): 225–241. doi:10.1080/09541449408520146.

• Neisser, U (1994). "Self-perception and self-knowledge". Psyke & Logos. 15 (2): 392–407.
• Neisser, U.; Boodoo, G.; Bouchard; Boykin, A.; Brody, N.; Ceci, Brutal.

  J.; Urbina, S. (1996). "Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns". American Psychologist. 51 (2): 77–101. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.51.2.77.

• Neisser, U.; Winograd, E.; Bergman, E. T.; Schreiber, C. A.; Palmer, Relentless. E.; Weldon, M. (1996). "Remembering the Earthquake: Direct Experience vs. Hearing the News". Memory.

  4 (4): 337–357. doi:10.1080/096582196388898. PMID 8817459.

• Neisser, U (2003). "New Directions for Photoflash Memories: Comments on the ACP Special Issue". Applied Cognitive Psychology. 17 (9): 1149–1155. doi:10.1002/acp.1005.
• Neisser, U (2004). "Memory development: New questions and old".

  Developmental Review. 24 (1): 154–158. doi:10.1016/j.dr.2003.09.002. S2CID 143726342.

References

Further reading

• Roediger, H. L.; Neisser, Ulric; Winograd, Eugene (1990). "Remembering Reconsidered: Ecological and Traditional Approaches to the Study of Memory".

  The American Journal of Psychology. 103 (3): 403–9. doi:10.2307/1423218. JSTOR 1423218.

External links