James Lloyd "Jay" McClelland, FBA (born December 1, 1948) is the Lucie Stern Professor at Stanford University, where he was formerly the chair of the

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

Department. He is best known for his work on statistical learning and

Parallel Distributed Processing Connectionism refers to both an approach in the field of cognitive science that hopes to explain mental phenomena using artificial neural networks (ANN) and to a wide range of techniques and algorithms using ANNs in the context of artificial int ...

, applying

connectionist Connectionism refers to both an approach in the field of cognitive science that hopes to explain mental phenomena using artificial neural networks (ANN) and to a wide range of techniques and algorithms using ANNs in the context of artificial int ...

models (or neural networks) to explain cognitive phenomena such as spoken word recognition and visual word recognition. McClelland is to a large extent responsible for the large increase in scientific interest in connectionism in the 1980s.

Early life and education

McClelland was born on December 1, 1948 to Walter Moore and Frances (Shaffer) McClelland. He received a B.A. in Psychology from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1970, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1975. He married Heidi Marsha Feldman on May 6, 1978, and has two daughters.

Career

In 1986 McClelland published ''Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition'' with David Rumelhart, which some still regard as a bible for

cognitive scientists Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

. His present work focuses on learning, memory processes, and psycholinguistics, still within the framework of connectionist models. He is a former chair of the Rumelhart Prize committee, having collaborated with Rumelhart for many years, and himself received the award in 2010 at the Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon. McClelland and David Rumelhart are known for their debate with

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ...

and Alan Prince regarding the necessity of a language-specific learning module. In fall 2006 McClelland moved to Stanford University from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a professor of psychology and

Cognitive Neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental process ...

. He also holds a part-time appointment as Consulting Professor at the Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU) within the School of Psychological Sciences,

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

Awards

Mind & Brain Prize The Mind & Brain Prize was established in 2003 and aims at honouring the most relevant researchers in the field of cognitive science, as well as to recognize outstanding achievement in advancing knowledge about mind and brain by persons whose work ...

University of Louisville The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one o ...

Grawemeyer Award The Grawemeyer Awards () are five awards given annually by the University of Louisville. The prizes are presented to individuals in the fields of education, ideas improving world order, music composition, religion, and psychology. The religion awa ...

in psychology, 2002 * William W. Cumming prize from Columbia University, 1970 * Research Scientist Career Development Award from the

National Institute of Mental Health The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the prima ...

, 1981—86, 1987—97 * Fellow,

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

, 1970—73 * Rumelhart Prize, 2010 * C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize, 2014 In July 2017, McClelland was elected a

Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

(FBA), the United Kingdom's

national academy A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with State (polity), state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but ...

for the humanities and social sciences.

References

External links

Personal website

Staff website at University of Manchester
{{DEFAULTSORT:McClelland, James Computational psychologists American cognitive neuroscientists Speech perception researchers Rumelhart Prize laureates Stanford University Department of Psychology faculty Carnegie Mellon University faculty Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1948 births Living people Psycholinguists Winners of the Heineken Prize Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy

Early life and education

Career

Awards

See also

References

External links