Daniel Schacter | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1952-06-17)June 17, 1952 (age 73) Scarsdale, New York, U.S. |
| Education | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA) University of Toronto (MA,PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Professor of psychology atHarvard University, author |
| Known for | Humanmemory andamnesia |
Daniel Lawrence Schacter (born June 17, 1952) is an Americanpsychologist. He isWilliam R. Kenan, Jr.'s endowed professor of psychology atHarvard University.[1] His research has focused on psychological and biological aspects of humanmemory andamnesia, with a particular emphasis on the distinction between conscious andnonconscious forms of memory and, more recently, on brain mechanisms of memory and brain distortion, and memory and future simulation.
Schacter received his B.A. from theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974, M.A. and Ph.D. from theUniversity of Toronto inCanada in 1977 and 1981 respectively. His Ph.D.thesis was supervised byEndel Tulving. In 1978, he was a visiting researcher at theUniversity of Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology.[2] He has also studied the effects of aging on memory.[3]
Professor Schacter's research uses both cognitive testing and brain imaging techniques such aspositron emission tomography andfunctional magnetic resonance imaging. Schacter has written three books, edited seven volumes, and published over 200 scientific articles and chapters. His books include:Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (1996);Forgotten ideas, neglected pioneers:Richard Semon and the story of memory. (2001);[4] andThe Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (2001).
InThe Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, Schacter identifies seven ways ("sins") that memory can "fail us". The seven sins are: Transience, Absent-Mindedness, Blocking,Misattribution, Suggestibility, Persistence, andBias.[5]
In addition to his books, Schacter publishes regularly in scientific journals. Among the topics that Schacter has investigated are:Alzheimer's disease, theneuroscience of memory, age-related memory effects, issues related tofalse memory, and memory and simulation. He is widely known for his integrative reviews, including his seminal review ofimplicit memory in 1987.
In 2012 he said in an interview to theAmerican Psychologist journal that our brain is like atime machine, or to be precise, it works as avirtual reality simulator. He also said that our brain can imagine thefuture but it has difficulty in retracing the past.[6]
He has been the first author on multiple editions of the textbooksPsychology andIntroducing Psychology, both having six editions as of 2023.[7][8]
He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996.[9] In 2005 Schacter received theNAS Award for Scientific Reviewing from theNational Academy of Sciences.[10] He was elected to membership in NAS in 2013.[11]
