Neil O'Connor
| Neil O'Connor | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
March 23, 1917 Geraldton, Western Australia |
| Died | October 1, 1997 (aged 80) |
| Alma mater | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | experimental psychology |
| Institutions | University of London, University College London |
| Doctoral students | Uta Frith |
Neil O'Connor (March 23 1917 - October 1 1997) was an experimental psychologist, born in Geraldton, Western Australia. He died in 1997 after a traffic incident.
He studied Philosophy and Experimental Psychology in Oxford and served in India in the Second World War. He became interested in studying the extent to with learning disabled individuals could still learn when studying for a PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry (now part of King's College London). With Jack Tizard he conducted groundbreaking experiments that showed that these individuals could indeed learn and be employed. This work led to greater awareness of the barriers created by residential care.
Holding strong socialist principles Neil O'Connor forged academic connections with Soviet psychologists and neuropsychologists, for example, Alexander Luria. In this way, he helped spread their often advanced ideas on learning and attention in the education of children with mental deficiency among Western psychologists.
Until 1968 O'Connor was a member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Social Psychiatry Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry (University of London). He received the Kennedy Prize for his work with Jack TIzard. IN 1968 became director of the MRC Developmental Psychology Unit, affiliated to University College London, from 1968 - 1982, when he retired. He believed in having a very small group of independent scientists. His own work was always in collaboration with Beate Hermelin, with strict rotation of authorship. They enjoyed working together and their different talents complemented each other perfectly.
Other members of this small MRC Unit were Uta Frith and Rick Cromer. Rick Cromer (born 1940 - died prematurely ca 1990) was a psycholinguist whose PhD thesis on early language acquisition had been supervised by Roger Brown, at Harvard. Rick brought expertise in the study of cognitive processes underlying language acquisition and language impairments. One of his best known paradigms was with puppets using the phrases: 'The duck is easy to bite; the wolf is eager to bite. Who does the biting?' The intriguing question is how do children understand the contrast in meaning that is not apparent in the surface of the syntactic form. Students of Neil O'Connor include Kim Kirsner, John Sloboda, Barbara Dodd and Linda Pring.
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