Nora Newcombe

Newcombe led the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC), one of 6 NSF-funded Science of Learning Centers that explore learning in an interdisciplinary framework, during its grant period from 2006-2018. She has thus brought spatial cognition to the forefront of our conceptualization of the human intellect and its potential for learning.

Newcombe 's contributions to spatial cognition and its development are extensive. Her 2003 book Making Space, co-authored with Janellen Huttenlocher, synthesized decades of research and provided a new direction for the field, and provided a new conceptualization of cognitive development different from either traditional nativist or from traditional empiricist approaches.

Newcombe served terms as President of the American Psychological Association Division 7 (Developmental Psychology) (2001-2002), the Eastern Psychological Association (2008-2009), the Cognitive Development Society (2009-2011), the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (2018-2019), and the International Mind, Brain and Education Society. She previously served as the Chair of the Board of the Cognitive Science Society and Chair of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association.

Newcombe was a James McKeen Cattell Fellow for a sabbatical year at Princeton in 1999-2000. In 2020 she presented the Paul B. Baltes Lecture at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. She is Editor-in-chief of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. She previously served as Editor-in-chief of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Newcombe attended Antioch College and completed an undergraduate degree in psychology in 1972. She continued her education at Harvard University, receiving a Ph.D. in psychology in 1976 under the supervision of Jerome Kagan. At Harvard, Newcombe collaborated with Barbara Rogoff and Kagan on studies of the development of recognition memory. Newcombe taught at Pennsylvania State University prior to joining the faculty of Temple University.

In addition, she has worked on sex differences in cognition, beginning in the late 1970s with a critical look at a then-popular explanation of sex differences in spatial functioning in terms the onset of puberty. Since then, she has recognized the evolutionary and neural factors involved in sex differences while also emphasizing the malleability of cognitive ability as noted in the literature. (recently reprinted in a special issue celebrating 25 years of Applied Cognitive Psychology).

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 and cognitive science, and expert on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (2006-2018), one of six Science of Learning Centers funded by the National Science Foundation.