Neil O'Connor (March 23, 1917 – October 1, 1997) was an
experimental psychologist
Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
, born in
Geraldton
Geraldton (Wajarri: ''Jambinu'', Wilunyu: ''Jambinbirri'') is a coastal city in the Mid West region of the Australian state of Western Australia, north of the state capital, Perth.
At June 2018, Geraldton had an urban population of 37,648. ...
, Western Australia. He died in 1997 after a
traffic incident.
Education
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
The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) is a research institution dedicated to discovering what causes mental illness and diseases of the brain. In addition, its aim is to help identify new treatments for them and ways ...
(now part of
King's College London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...
). With
Jack Tizard
Jack Tizard Order of the British Empire, CBE (25 February 1919 – 2 August 1979) was a research psychologist, professor of child development, research unit director, international adviser on learning disability and child care, and a president of ...
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.
Career and research
Holding strong socialist principles Neil O'Connor forged academic connections with Soviet psychologists and neuropsychologists, for example,
Alexander Luria
Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
. 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
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
). He received the Kennedy Prize for his work with Jack Tizard. In 1968 he became director of the MRC Developmental Psychology Unit, affiliated to
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
, 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
Beate Marianne E Hermelin, (''née'' Fliess; 7 August 1919 – 14 January 2007), affectionately known as Ati, was a German-born experimental psychologist, who worked in the UK and was a pioneer in the experimental study of autism. Her numerous s ...
, 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
Dame Uta Frith (''née'' Aurnhammer; born 25 May 1941) is a German-British developmental psychologist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She has pioneered much of the current research into autism and dysl ...
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.
O'Connor was President of the Experimental Psychology Society. He shunned publicity and kept a 'low profile', in line with the ethos of the time, but was hugely admired by his colleagues and students. After retiring in 1982, Neil O'Connor continued to work with Beate Hermelin on special talent (Savants), an area where they pioneered experimental research. After O'Connor's death in a traffic accident in 1997 Beate Hermelin told the story of their joint work on this topic.
Research
O'Connor was a pioneer in the experimental study of cognitive abilities in children with learning disabilities, various referred to as mental retardation or subnormality. He applied the advances in psychology that originated from information processing. He studied processes underlying perception, memory, language and spatial abilities with refined behavioural methods and derived new knowledge from comparing individuals with different levels of general intellectual ability. His aim was to see whether there were specific deficits over and above general deficits. He therefore compared different groups of participants with known specific deficits, such as visual or auditory impairments to investigate the impact of such impairments, if any, on general abilities. He recognised that the study of special talents was another route to elucidate the architecture of the mind. He considered it likely that there were specific modules in the mind that could be differentially affected by brain pathology. O'Connor was the author of a large number of scientific articles between 1950 and 1994. The major experiments were summarized in several monographs.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:OConnor, Neil
1917 births
1997 deaths
British psychologists
Academics of University College London
People from Geraldton
Alumni of King's College London
Australian psychologists
20th-century psychologists
Road incident deaths in Australia
Australian socialists