Janellen Huttenlocher

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Janellen Huttenlocher , b. Burns (born February 17, 1932 in Buffalo , New York , † November 20, 2016 in Chicago , Illinois ) was an American professor of psychology .

Life

Huttenlocher studied psychology at the University at Buffalo up to her bachelor's degree in 1953. She then moved to Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts), where she earned her master's degree in 1958 and her doctorate ( Ph.D. ) in 1960 . Since 1974 she was Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago (Illinois).

Janellen Huttenlocher was married to the neuropediatrist and neuroscientist Peter Huttenlocher . Her son Daniel Huttenlocher and her daughter Anna Huttenlocher are also professors at US universities.

Scientific achievements

Huttenlocher's research area was developmental and cognitive psychology with a focus on language development , the development of spatial imagination and the development of quantitative ideas in small children . Through her studies on language acquisition, she found, among other things, that toddlers make better progress in learning their mother tongue if they are not spoken to in a simplified child's language but in fully correct sentences. The language behavior of parents and educators towards the children not only influences the vocabulary of the toddlers, but also the learning of grammar.

Her research on the development of quantitative ideas showed that preschoolers already have an abstract understanding of numbers before they can articulate it. Another study showed that preschoolers were able to learn basic fractions when they could use wedge-shaped models instead of numbers.

1991 Huttenlocher released the categories Adaptation Model (Engl. Category adjustment model ) to the idea of space. She postulates that the memory of the spatial position of an object takes place in two stages: the position of an object is assigned to a spatial category through the introduction of self-selected boundaries and stored in a kind of spatial coordinate system.

Awards

  • 2002 G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology from the American Psychological Association for her achievements in the field of developmental psychology
  • 2007 admission to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • 2008 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions for Psychology from the American Psychological Association for her theoretical and empirical contributions to developmental and cognitive psychology

Fonts (selection)

  • Janellen Huttenlocher, Larry V. Hedges, Susan Duncan: Categories and particulars: Prototype effects in estimating spatial location . Psychological Review 1991, Volume 98, pp. 352-376
  • Janellen Huttenlocher, Wendy Haight, Anthony Bryk, Michael Seltzer, Thomas Lyons: Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender . Developmental Psychology 1991, Vol. 27 (2), pp. 236-248.
  • Nora S. Newcombe, Janellen Huttenlocher: Making Space: The Development of Spatial Representation and Reasoning (Learning, Development and Conceptual Change) . MIT Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 978-0262140690
  • Kelly S. Mix, Janellen Huttenlocher, Susan Cohen Levine: Quantitative Development in Infancy and Early Childhood . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 978-0195123005

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Peters: Janellen Huttenlocher, pioneering scholar in childhood development, 1932-2016. In: UChicagoNews. December 1, 2016, accessed February 12, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Huttenlocher, Janellen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo
DATE OF DEATH 20th November 2016
Place of death Chicago , Illinois