Michael Posner (psychologist)

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Michael I. Posner (born September 12, 1936 ) is an American psychologist and cognitive scientist.

Posner graduated from the University of Washington with a master’s degree and received his PhD from the University of Michigan . Until his retirement he was a professor at the University of Oregon . He is also an adjunct professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, where he was founding director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology.

Posner dealt with attention in visual spatial search (including the spatial cueing paradigm or Posner cueing task, which measures a person's ability to focus their attention on something else), reading and numerical calculations. He further developed the method of mental chronometry by Frans Donders (presented in his book Chronometric Explorations of Mind from 1976), whereby individual cognitive processes are differentiated by comparing tasks with or without this process (e.g. letter matching task as an example of elementary cognitive tasks ). He also investigated the localization of cognitive functions in the brain using PET (and other imaging techniques) and the change in patterns of brain activity in increasingly complex tasks. He also studies genetic and environmental influences on the development of the attention functions in the brain and the training of attention in children and adolescents. With Yoav Cohen he was the first to describe inhibition of return .

He received the Pasarow Award in 1999, the Grawemeyer Award (with Marcus Raichle and Steven Petersen ) in Psychology in 2001 , the National Medal of Science in 2008, and the John J. Carty Award in 2012 for outstanding contributions to understanding spatial attention and pioneering studies of the neural base of cognition with non-invasive functional imaging for the brain . In 2008 he gave the first Paul B. Baltes lecture at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (Lecture: Executive attention: Its origins, development, and functions ).

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences . In 2014 he became a corresponding fellow of the British Academy .

Fonts (selection)

  • Cognition: an introduction, Scott Foresman 1973
    • German translation: Kognitive Psychologie, Munich: Juventa Verlag 1976
  • Chronometric Explorations of Mind, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum 1976
  • with Marcus Raichle : Images of Mind, Scientific American Books 1994
    • German edition: Images of the Spirit: Brain researchers on the trail of thinking, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag 1996
  • with MK Rothbart u. a .: Training, maturation and genetic influences on the development of executive attention. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 102, 2005, pp. 14931-14936.
  • with Mary K. Rothbart: Educating the Human Brain, American Psychological Association 2007
  • with Y. Tang: Attention training and Attention State Training, Trends in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, 2009, pp. 222-227.
  • Editor: Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention, Guilford Press, 2nd edition 2011
  • with SE Petersen: The attention system of the human brain: 20 years after, Annual Review of Neuroscience, Volume 35, 2012, pp. 71-89.
  • with MK Rothbart, BE Sheese, P. Voelker: Developing Attention: Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms, Advances in Neuroscience 2014
  • with AP Weible u. a .: Rhythmic brain stimulation reduces anxiety-related behavior in a mouse model based on meditation training, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 114, 2017, pp. 2532-2537, PMID 28223484

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Laudation: For outstanding contributions to the understanding of spatial attention and for pioneering investigations of the neural basis of cognition using non-invasive functional brain imaging methods .
personal data
SURNAME Posner, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Posner, Michael I.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1936