Ulric Neisser

Ulric Neisser (born 8 December 1928) is an American psychologist.

Born in Kiel, Germany, he moved with his family to the United States in 1931. Neisser earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1950, a Master’s at Swarthmore, and a doctorate from Harvard in 1956. He then taught at Brandeis, Cornell, and Emory universities.

The modern growth of cognitive psychology received a major boost from the publication in 1967 of the first, and most influential, of his books: Cognitive Psychology.

in 1976, he wrote Cognition and Reality, in which he began to express a dissatisfaction with the linear programming model of cognitive psychology at that time, and the excessive reliance on laboratory work, rather than real-life situations. In his later writings he became critical of the methodology of much cognitive psychology, faulting it for being "ecologically invalid."

In 1981, Neisser published "John Dean's memory: a case study", in regards to the testimony of John Dean for the Watergate Scandal.

In 1995, Neisser headed an American Psychological Association task force writing a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research in response to the claims being advanced amid the Bell Curve controversy.

In 1998, he published The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures.