The psychologist Ulric Neisser stood out for being an important figure in Cognitive Psychology being even considered the father of this branch of Psychology.
Although his first intention was to study Physics, he quickly realized that what really interested him was Psychology. In this way, after completing his doctorate, he began to work as a professor in this discipline and to investigate different processes of human cognition. In particular, he focused on studying the capacity of perception, attention and memory and different aspects linked to intelligence.
In this article you will find a biography of Ulric Neisser a summary of the most relevant events in his life and his main contributions to Psychology.
Brief biography of Ulric Neisser
Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser was born on December 8, 1928 in Kiel, a city in northern Germany. His father, Hans, was a professor of economics at the University of Kiel and her mother, Charlotte, was a sociologist. Ulreich was the youngest of two brothers, his sister Marianne was 4 years older.
The religious beliefs of his father, who was Jewish, and the greater strength that the Nazis were achieving in Germany, led the Neisser family to decide move to the United States in 1933, specifically to Swarthmore in Pennsylvania. From a very young age, Ulric showed interest in science, encouraged by his father to do so.
Already in the United States, Neisser began his university studies at Harvard. His first intention was to graduate in Physics, but upon becoming interested in different areas of teaching he was quickly attracted to Psychology. Throughout his psychological training he learned about different branches of Psychology such as psychoanalysis, behavioral Psychology or Gestalt, the latter especially attracting him. In 1950 he managed to graduate in Psychology.
Once graduated, he wanted to continue his training and start a master’s degree at Swarthmore College, with the intention of being able to work with one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. He obtained his master’s degree two years later, in 1952. Subsequently, he completed a doctorate at the same University where he had studied his degree, Harvard. He achieved his doctorate in 1956.
Professional life
After completing his training, he worked as a professor at Harvard University for a year, before accepting Serve as a professor at Brandeis University in Middlesex In this new institution, Neisser was able to expand his knowledge of Psychology by interacting with such distinguished psychologists as Abraham Maslow, who is considered the founder of Humanistic Psychology.
Another person who influenced Neisser’s life, in his way of understanding Psychology, was Oliver Selfridge, who was a great defender of artificial intelligence. The two became friends and Neisser He began working as an advisor at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories, where Selfridge worked as a computer scientist, thus initiating the development of a program together. In 1960 they published an article in the magazine “Scientific American” where they presented the pandemonium model of pattern recognition. Thanks to the publication of this model, they received various grants, which allowed them to expand their study to other fields of Psychology linked to human thought.
In 1967 he published what would be his best-known book “Cognitive Psychology.” Shortly afterward he began his work as a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca. At this University he carried out studies on human perception and memory. At the age of 55, in 1983, he left Cornell to begin working at Emory University in Atlanta. In this period he developed one of his most notable experiments on memory, known as “Challenger” and founded the “Emory Cognition Project”. Finally, in 1996 he decided to return to Cornell University, where he would work until retirement. of the.
Despite his connection with Cognitive Psychology, the author began to show doubts regarding some practices carried out in that field These doubts led to the publication, in 1976, of the book “Cognition and Reality” where the author raised three critical points of Cognitive Psychology. Firstly, he was not satisfied with the importance that was being given to information processing models, secondly he believed that cognitivism was not valuing the daily aspects of the subjects’ lives and thirdly he understood that Cognitive psychology was lagging behind other types of psychology such as development and direct perception.
In addition, In 1981 he became interested in the case of John Dean, who was an advisor to the president Dean testified about the Watergate case and when comparing his testimony with the actual information it was seen that what he had expressed was distorted. Neisser studied the case and pointed out that the memory that a person shows about an event should be understood as an active process, where not only the information about the events influences but also the emotional state that the subject shows.
In 1995 led a group effort at the American Psychological Association that focused on reviewing studies that had been done on intelligence, focusing especially on the information presented in the book “The Bell Curve”. A year later, in 1996, the psychologist gave a lecture at Emory University regarding the influence that the environment could have on variations in intelligence test scores. In 1998 he published a book related to the study of intelligence titled “The Rising Curve: Long Term Gains in IQ and Related Measurement.”
Neisser was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. On February 17, 2012, Ulric Neisser died in Ithaca, New York, due to the neurodegenerative disease he suffered from, Parkinson’s.
Most relevant contributions to the field of Psychology
As we have already mentioned, Neisser stood out for his studies in the field of Cognitive Psychology, even considering himself the father of this psychological branch. In particular, he focused on the research of perception and attention, memory, and in the last years of his professional career he focused on the knowledge of intelligence. Let’s see then what his main contributions were and what the author proposed.
1. Inattentional blindness
Some of the processes necessary to be able to encode the information and thus be able to work with it and store it, are perception and attention, we must be attentive to the stimuli in order to be aware of them and be able to remember them later. In order to verify the extent of perceptual and attentional capacity, Neisser and his research group conducted a study that consisted of presenting a recording showing people wearing black and white t-shirts playing basketball.
Well, the premise that was given to the subjects was that they had to pay attention to the passes made by the players in white. It was observed that the majority of participants were not able to perceive a lady with an umbrella passing through the field during the recording
In this way, it was noted that people are capable of focusing our attention on a specific focus in our environment, ignoring all other information. This effect is known as inattentional blindness.
2. Memory
As we have already seen, Neisser showed interest in the study of memory. It was in 1981 when the psychologist first introduced the concept of episodic memory following the controversial case of John Dean’s testimony. This type of memory is linked to memories of everyday life events, autobiographical information with a specific place and time, such as remembering what we did last weekend.
Neisser therefore proposed that the memory process is active, which means that we do not remember the information as it happened, but other factors such as emotions or the information that we already had previously have an influence. Thus, the author stated that Dean’s intention in giving a distorted testimony was not to lie, this is because we construct the memory by gathering information from other past experiences without us being aware of it.
Flash memory refers to the memory of an event linked to an emotion These memories can refer to more personal events or events experienced by a larger number of people, such as a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
It was believed that this memory was more powerful and would be remembered better than other types of memory. Neisser did not agree with this statement, so he conducted a study with subjects who had been present or had heard the news of the earthquake that occurred in California in 1989. The results he obtained were the following: the memory of the subjects who had experienced the event was greater and remained more unchanged without distortion compared to those who had only been listeners.
The psychologist concluded that flash memory was just as erratic as other types of memory, but that the greater the subject’s involvement in the event, the better his memory of the event was.