Bruner, Jerome Seymour

Born Oct. 1, 1915, in New York. American psychologist. Professor of psychology since 1952. Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University since 1961.

Bruner was one of the first to begin studying the role of need and value as organizing factors in perception. He has also investigated the structure of social perception—the correlation between feeling and perception in personal relations within a group. Bruner set forth and provided the experimental groundwork for the thesis that during the formation of concepts the individual utilizes a definite strategy, either whole or partial, depending upon whether every characteristic of a given object is taken as a point of departure or only one of them. In a number of Bruner’s works, the achievements of psychology have been used to provide the groundwork for scientific ideas concerning the learning process, which is regarded as a factor leading to intellectual development.