Nora Newcombe

Nora S. Newcombe
Nora S. Newcombe, 2008, Department of Psychology, Temple University
Born	1951 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Alma mater	Harvard University
Known for	Spatial development, Spatial cognition, Episodic memory
Awards	2014 APS William James Fellow Award, G. Stanley Hall Award, George A. Miller Award, James McKeen Cattell Fellow, Distinguished Service to Psychological Science Award, Women in Cognitive Science Mentorship Award
Scientific career
Fields	Cognitive development, Cognitive psychology
Institutions	Temple University
Doctoral advisor	Jerome Kagan

Nora S. Newcombe is the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, working on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and on the development of episodic memory. She is the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, one of six NSF-funded Science of Learning Centers.

Newcombe received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976. She has served as the President of the Cognitive Development Society, Division 7 (Developmental) of the American Psychological Association, the Eastern Psychological Association and as Chair of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association. She has been elected as a Fellow in various societies including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Association for Psychological Science, four divisions of the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Newcombe's contributions to spatial cognition and its development are extensive. Her book with Janellen Huttenlocher in 2003, Making Space, synthesized decades of research and provided a new direction for the field, and provides a new conceptualization of cognitive development different from either traditional nativist or from traditional empiricist approaches. In addition, she has worked on sex differences in cognition, beginning in the late 1970s with a critical look at a then-popular explanation of sex differences in spatial functioning in terms the onset of puberty. Since then, she has recognized the evolutionary and neural factors involved in sex differences while also emphasizing the malleability of cognitive ability as noted in the literature. (recently reprinted in a special issue celebrating 25 years of Applied Cognitive Psychology).