The University Record, May 7, 1996
Smith elected to National Academy of Sciences
Psychology Prof. Edward E. Smith was elected to the National Academy of Sciences last Tuesday (April 30).
Smith is one of 60 new members and 15 foreign associates elected at the annual meeting of the Academy in Washing ton, D.C. Election to the membership is one of the highest honors accorded scientists and engineers in recognition of distinguished, sustained achievements in original research.
“Prof. Smith is one of the most prominent and respected cognitive psychologists in the country. For the past 20 years he has been a leader in the field, helping to redefine its mainstream time after time,” says Patricia Gurin, chair of the Department of Psychology. “Indeed, a chronological listing of Prof. Smith’s research interests over the past is almost ta ntamount to tracing the mainstream in cognitive psychology.”
Smith, who also is director of the Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience Program, studies categorization and reasoning, the organizational and retrieval processes in memory and comprehension, and the neuropsychology of memory, categorization and reasoning.
Smith’s early work focused on mental chronology, human short-term memory and semantic memory, language under standing and memory organization. The effects of his findings extended beyond cognitive psychology to linguistics and artificial memory, Gurin says.
Smith’s current research involves PET (positron emission tomography) scans of the brain to study age and working memory, and visual-spatial working memory and problem-solving.
Smith is co-author or co-editor of 11 books, including Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology, Invitation to Cognitive Science: Thinking, and Readings in Cognitive Science : A Psychological and Artificial Intelligence Perspective .
He joined the U-M faculty in 1986 and became director of the Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience Program in 1994.
A recipient of numerous awards, Smith was elected into the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 1986 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. He also was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1992–93.
