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US psychologist Morton Ann Gernsbacher conducts research in the field of language processing and autism. She has now been honoured for her work by the Würzburg Psychology Department.
Every two years, the Institute of Psychology at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) awards the Oswald Külpe Prize, which is endowed with 3,000 euros. The prize honours scientists for their outstanding achievements in experimental research into higher mental processes. This year, the prize goes to Morton Ann Gernsbacher from the USA. She received the award at a ceremony on 28 November.
Morton Ann Gernsbacher is a renowned American psychologist and professor who is primarily known for her research in the fields of psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology and autism. Her work in the field of language processing was one reason why she was awarded the Oswald Külpe Prize: "We are honouring her outstanding and highly influential research on language comprehension, which focuses on the metaphor of language comprehension as structure formation," said Professor Tobias Richter, holder of the Chair of Psychology IV at JMU, in his laudatory speech.
Understanding is Based on Three Fundamental Processes
Gernsbacher's core idea is that understanding is based on general cognitive mechanisms that function independently of the modality or medium through which information is conveyed. "Whether we encounter information in the form of written text, spoken discourse or images, Morton Ann Gernsbacher proposes that we understand this information through three basic cognitive processes: creating a basis for a mental representation, mapping new information to this basis, and switching to a new structure when incoming information no longer fits the existing one," says Richter.
This structure formation model makes it possible to explain many heterogeneous findings from psycholinguistics and text comprehension. A particular strength of her theory is its ability to explain individual differences in comprehension ability. For example, Gernsbacher has shown that less experienced readers have difficulties suppressing irrelevant information, which in turn disrupts the basic processes of structure formation.
Private Trigger for Autism Research
Special circumstances led Morton Ann Gernsbacher to her second research focus: autism. "The inspiration for this knowledge arose from my lap, rather than my lab," she writes on her website. This was triggered by the fact that her son was diagnosed with autism in 1998. Since then, she has made "extraordinary contributions to autism research, where she is a leading voice for evidence-based and non-deficit orientated perspectives", says Richter.
Gernsbacher's studies show that many characteristics traditionally labelled as "autistic deficits" can instead be understood as differences in cognitive and sensorimotor processes and in the communicative context - and not as inherent social impairments.
Deficit Models Called into Question
For example, she has shown that autistic people's supposed deficits in empathy are often due to the demands of a task rather than a fundamental inability to understand others. "She has provided evidence that many social and communicative difficulties attributed to autism are highly context-dependent," said Richter. Her work thus questions deficit models and lays the conceptual foundation for more differentiated theories of autistic communication.
"In her work on autism, Gernsbacher has consistently advocated a rigorous methodology, conceptual clarity and a humane, scientifically grounded view of autism - and has significantly influenced the field to develop in the direction of such a view," said Richter.
About the Person
The Oswald Külpe Prize winner taught high school Spanish and English for five years before earning her doctorate in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. She was then appointed to the University of Oregon, where she rose from assistant professor to associate professor and full professor of psychology in just eight years.
In 1992, Gernsbacher moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has worked ever since, since 1994 as Sir Frederick Bartlett Professor and since 2003 additionally as part of a Vilas Research Professorship.
She has received numerous awards and accolades for her work, including the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, the "Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award" from the Society for Text and Discourse and recognition as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.
Facts about the Oswald Külpe Prize
Oswald Külpe (1862-1915) founded the Würzburg Psychological Institute in 1896 and went down in the history of science as the father of the "Würzburg School of Thought Psychology" (Würzburger Schule der Denkpsychologie). At the beginning of the 20th century, the representatives of this school of research were the first to experimentally investigate higher mental processes such as thinking, volition and judgement.
To honour his memory, the Institute has awarded the Oswald Külpe Prize every two years since 2005. The prize was established by Würzburg psychology professor Fritz Strack, who donated it to the Sparkasse Foundation of the City of Würzburg.
Previous Prize Winners
The previous winners of the Oswald Külpe Prize are Asher Koriat (University of Haifa, 2005), Richard E. Nisbett (University of Michigan, 2007), Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig, 2009), Wolfgang Prinz (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig, 2011), Anke Ehlers (University of Oxford, 2013), Norbert Schwarz (University of Michigan, 2015), Jan Born (University of Tübingen, 2017), Paul van den Broek (Leiden University, 2019), Jan De Houwer (University of Ghent, 2021) and Klaus Oberauer (University of Zurich, 2023).
Morton Ann Gernsbacher is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). She has now been ...
Source: Charlotte Steberl
Copyright: University of Würzburg
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Psychology
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Morton Ann Gernsbacher is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). She has now been ...
Source: Charlotte Steberl
Copyright: University of Würzburg
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