COMMENT OBITUARY (1915–2016) who shaped ideas about , and education.

erome Seymour Bruner helped to launch become widely recognized as an essential AP the in — social mechanism for guiding infants to link Jthe shift from focusing on how stimuli or words to objects in . rewards provoke behaviours (behaviourism) Bruner returned to the in to trying to understand the workings of the 1980. First at for Social . Research in New York, then at New York Bruner, who died on 5 June, aged 100, was University, he explored people’s propensity born — blind — in in 1915. to tell stories. He argued that unlike logic, His sight was restored by cataract operations narrative thought is universal. Once again, when he was two. In 1937, he earned a degree he was trying to expand cognitive psychol- in psychology at in Durham, ogy to encompass human experience. His North Carolina. He received master’s and 1986 book on narrative, Actual , Pos- doctoral degrees in psychology from Harvard sible Worlds, has more than 14,100 citations. University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Applying ideas about narrative to the law, 1939 and 1941. After working in military Bruner started working with legal scholar during the Second World War, Anthony Amsterdam at the New York Uni- he took a faculty position at Harvard in 1945. versity School of Law. Their 2000 book Mind- Bruner once noted that during his two ing the Law describes how courts rely on years of blindness, he had constructed a story­telling and how the stories “change the visual world in his mind. His early experi- way we understand the law — and ourselves”. ences may explain why, in the 1940s and Jerry made seminal contributions to an 1950s, he sought to demonstrate how per- my first year in graduate school at Harvard, astonishing number of fields — each a stop on ception is not just a bottom-up process con- Bruner arranged for me to go to Senegal to the road to finding out what makes us human. trolled by the , but also a top-down study culture and cognitive development. Beginning in the 1960s, computer simulations process controlled by the mind. Because his book had tightly linked school- became the model of the human mind in cog- In collaborative conducted ing with cognitive development, Bruner was nitive psychology, with researchers trying to at Harvard, Bruner revealed how certain delighted when my data from Senegal showed simulate how humans solve problems, form mental factors influence visual perception. that various measures of such development concepts, comprehend language and learn. In one study, for instance, he demonstrated depended on whether or not children had But reducing humans to computers was anti- that ten-year-old children overestimate the attended school, not just their age. thetical to Jerry’s humanistic perspective. size of bigger coins and underestimate the I had first encountered Bruner during Given this, it was surprising that com- size of smaller coins, and that poor children my first year of university, when he lectured puter scientist , the designer of overestimate the size of the larger coins in one of my courses. In his lectures, he what became the Macintosh graphical user more than affluent ones do (J. S. Bruner described the concept of human intentional- interface, turned up more than 30 years ago et al. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol. 42, 33–44; ity — the ability of the mind to be proactive on Bruner’s doorstep with a gift 1947). His work inspired a new approach to and to represent future goals — as another of a Macintosh computer. Jerry’s ideas of the study of perception that became known challenge to behaviourism. When I returned representing information through actions, as the new look in perception. to Harvard as a research fellow in 1968, icons and symbols, central to his theory of Bruner transformed perception from a Bruner was studying cognitive development cognitive development, had inspired Kay -dependent response into some- in infancy. Intentionality was now central to get users (even children) to act (through thing that involved mental processing. But to his thinking. Crucially, he observed that a computer mouse) on icons, enabling the he wanted to study cognition more directly. infants only a few weeks or months old have use of an abstract set of symbols (computer With Jacqueline Goodnow intentions and goals, even before they are able program). This was the foundation for what and George Austin, he performed innovative to act on them. became the Macintosh interface. experiments that explored how people infer In 1972, Bruner sailed his boat across the Jerry had a towering intellect and an insa- concepts and categories (for instance, of col- Atlantic to take up the first Watts Profes- tiable curiosity. When I returned from Sen- our and shape). Their 1956 book A Study of sorship of Psychology at the University of egal with my data, he made me feel as if I had Thinking was crucial in ushering in the cogni- Oxford, UK. There, he shifted focus from done the most exciting research in the world. tive revolution. ‘intentional action’ to ‘intentional interaction’. His reaction fuelled the rest of my career and Bruner’s 1960 book, The Process of Educa- In 1975, Michael Scaife and Bruner reported has greatly influenced my own mentoring. ■ tion brought the cognitive revolution to edu- that starting at eight months old, most cational thinking in the United States and infants will follow an ’s gaze when the Patricia Marks Greenfield is distinguished elsewhere. His concepts of the development adult turns to look at something (M. Scaife professor of psychology at the University of representational capacities, suggested that and J. S. Bruner 253, 265–266; 1975). of California, Los Angeles, USA. Jerome ideas should be communicated to students The pair called this phenomenon joint visual Bruner was her teacher, mentor, colleague using actions, icons or symbols, in that order, attention because it established a common and lifelong friend. and depending on their age. In 1963, after focus between adult and infant. It has since e-mail: [email protected]

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