Morton Ann Gernsbacher
Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gernsbacher received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in
1983, and was an assistant, associate, and full professor at the University
of Oregon, from 1983 to 1992, when she then joined the faculty at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is a Vilas Research Professor and the Sir
Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology. She is a fellow of the Society
for Experimental Psychologists, the American Psychological Association (Division
1 and 3), the American Psychological Society, and the American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She has received a National Institutes
of Health Research Career Development Award and a Senior Research Fellowship,
a Fulbright Research Scholar Award, a James McKeen Cattell Foundation Fellowship,
and a Professional Opportunities for Women Award from the National Science
Foundation.
Gernsbacher has served as an APA Distinguished Scientist Lecturer, President
of the International Society for Text and Discourse, President of the Division
of Experimental Psychology of the American Psychological Association, Chair
of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association,
Chair of the Publications Committee of the American Psychological Society,
Chair of the Electorate Nominating Committee of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, an advisor to the Nancy Lurie Marks Family
Foundation Communication and Autism Initiative and the International Council
for Developmental and Learning Disorders, a member of the Governing Board
of the Psychonomic Society, the Scientific Review Committee for the Cure
Autism Now Foundation, the Medical Affairs Committee of the National Alliance
for Autism Research.
Gernsbacher is an award winning teacher, who in 1998 received the Hilldale
Award for Distinguished Professional Accomplishment, the highest award bestowed
by the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty. She has served as editor-in-chief
of the journal, Memory & Cognition, currently serves as an associate
editor of Cognitive Psychology, and has served on nine other editorial boards.
She authored Language Comprehension as Structure Building (Erlbaum, 1990);
edited the Handbook of Psycholinguistics (Academic Press, 1994); co-edited
Coherence in Spontaneous Text (Benjamins, 1995), the Handbook of Discourse
Processes (Erlbaum, 2002) and three other books, with two more books in press.
She has published over
100 journal articles and invited chapters.
Gernsbacher's research has for 20 years investigated the cognitive processes
and mechanisms that underlie language comprehension. She empirically challenged
the view that language processing involves language-specific mechanisms by
proposing that, instead, it draws on general cognitive processes. This work
made her a central figure in the field of psycholinguistics and cognitive
psychology. During the past few years (motivated by personal passion) Gernsbacher
has become an expert in autism. Gernsbacher has already secured three grants
from the NIH, one from the CDC, and two from private foundations for autism
research. Her quest is to answer empirically the fundamental question of
why some children with autism can't speak. In this pursuit, Gernsbacher has
already made a highly significant discovery: Some young children with autism
can't speak, not because of intellectual limitations, not because of the
social impairment that by definition characterizes children with autism,
but because of motor planning challenges. On a conceptual level, this discovery
has begun a
paradigmatic shift away from explanations based on interpersonal deficits
toward those based on early sensory-motor challenges. On an individual clinical
level, this perspective has led to the recognition of previously unidentified
competence in some essentially nonverbal children with autism. On a disciplinary
basis, this research has suggested that fields such as psycholinguistics
and communicative disorders have more to contribute to the understanding
of autism than previously assumed.
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