Janellen Huttenlocher (February 17, 1932 – November 20, 2016) was a psychologist and professor known for her research in the field of the child's environment in the development of cognitive skills. She was the William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

at the time of her death. Huttenlocher was a recipient of the

Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...

William James Fellow Award The William James Fellow Award is an award of the Association for Psychological Science which "honors APS Members for their lifetime of significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology". The requirement is that "recipient ...

in 2013, and the

Society for Research in Child Development The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) is a professional society for the field of human development, focusing specifically on child development. It is a multidisciplinary, not-for-profit, professional association with a membership of ...

Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development in 2009. She was honored with the

APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology The APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology is an award of the American Psychological Association that "honors psychologists who have made distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychol ...

in 2008 for having "greatly expanded scientific knowledge about cognition and its development in domains as varied as language, spatial cognition, quantitative thought, and memory."

Biography

Huttenlocher (née Burns) was born in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

. She received her B.A. at the

University of Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

in 1953, married her husband

Peter Huttenlocher Peter Richard Huttenlocher (23 February 1931 – 15 August 2013) was a German-American pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist who discovered how the brain develops in children. He is considered to be one of the fathers of developmental cognitive ...

in 1954, and had three children. Huttenlocher attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

for her graduate studies in Psychology, completing her M.A. in 1958 and Ph.D in 1960 under the supervision of Professor

Frederick Mosteller Charles Frederick Mosteller (December 24, 1916 – July 23, 2006) was an American mathematician, considered one of the most eminent statisticians of the 20th century. He was the founding chairman of Harvard's statistics department from 1957 ...

. She completed postdoctoral training at Harvard University in the 1960s in the midst of the

cognitive revolution The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science. The relevant areas of interchange were between th ...

. Huttenlocher joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago in 1974, after teaching at

Teachers College, Columbia University Teachers College, Columbia University (TC), is the graduate school of education, health, and psychology of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887, it has served as one of the official faculties and ...

Research

Huttenlocher co-authored two books and over 100 research articles on a range of topics including language development, spatial reasoning, memory, and quantitative development. Her book ''Making space: The development of spatial representation and reasoning,'' co-authored with

Nora Newcombe Nora S. Newcombe (born 1951 in Toronto) is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology ...

, provided a comprehensive account of how children actively construct mental models of spatial environments. Her second book ''Quantitative development in infancy and early childhood,'' co-authored with

Kelly Mix Kelly S. Mix is an American developmental psychologist known for her research on the development of numerical concepts and their origins in infancy and toddlerhood. She is professor and chair of the Department of Human Development and Quantitative ...

and Susan Levine, focused on how children develop numerical concepts and quantitative reasoning skills. Huttenlocher was well known for her research on the verbal behavior of parents and teachers in relation to children's language development, focusing on the effects of early input on children's vocabulary growth and their learning of grammar (syntax).

Representative publications

*Huttenlocher, J. (1968). Constructing spatial images. ''Psychological Review'', ''75''(6), 550-560. *Huttenlocher, J. (1964). Children's language: Word-phrase relationship. ''Science'', ''143''(3603), 264-265. *Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. ''Developmental Psychology, 27''(2), 236-248. *Huttenlocher, J., Hedges, L. V., & Duncan, S. (1991). Categories and particulars. ''Psychological Review'', ''98''(3), 352-376. *Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M., Cymerman, E., & Levine, S. (2002). Language input and child syntax. ''Cognitive psychology'', ''45''(3), 337-374. *Huttenlocher, J., Waterfall, H., Vasilyeva, M., Vevea, J., & Hedges, L. V. (2010). Sources of variability in children’s language growth. ''Cognitive Psychology'', ''61''(4), 343-365.

References

External links

FABBS In Honor Of… Janellen Huttenlocher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Huttenlocher, Janellen 1932 births 2016 deaths American women psychologists 20th-century American psychologists University of Chicago faculty Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni University at Buffalo alumni 20th-century American women academics 21st-century American women academics People from Buffalo, New York 21st-century American psychologists