Rochel Gelman
Encyclopedia
Rochel Gelman is a psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, New Brunswick, NJ, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science.

Biography

Rochel Gelman was born in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 to parents who came from very religious Jewish communities in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. In high school, Gelman chose to pursue the math, physics and chemistry track for education, which her guidance counselor supported. In college, at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

, Dr. Gelman pursued a degree in the Honors Psychology program as was advised by her Dean. She participated in research in three labs, was an author on 2 papers, gave a talk at the Canadian Psychology Associate, and attended laboratory meetings. After graduating from the University of Toronto, Dr. Gelman attended the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

 (UCLA) and took classes both in developmental and human learning.

Gelman is married to fellow psychologist C. Randy Gallistel
C. Randy Gallistel
Charles Ransom Gallistel is a Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University. He is an expert in the cognitive processes of learning and memory, using animal models to carry out research on these topics. Gallistel is married to fellow psychologist Rochel Gelman...

, who also works at Rutgers.

Awards and honors

Dr. Gelman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

, winner of the 1995 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...

 (APA), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

, and a William James Fellow of the American Psychological Society. She also serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMS).

Dr. Gelman was featured on Closer to the Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future, a PBS series created, produced, and hosted by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

Research

Dr. Gelman's research in developmental cognitive science works to uncover the ease with which young children acquire intuitive understandings of natural numbers and arithmetic, children's perceptions of separately moveable animate and inanimate objects, children's understanding that outcomes have causes, and how children learn words and conversationally appropriate ways of talking. Dr. Gelman is noteworthy for her development of a Science-into-ESL program and preschool exhibit at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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