Roger Shepard
American psychologist (1929-2022) · United States · On the map · Academics · Died at 93
Roger Newland Shepard was an American cognitive scientist and author of the "universal law of generalization". He was considered a father of research on spatial relations.
Roger Shepard is read about 30 times a day, in 12 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 24 June 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
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Photos 4
Bird with earthworm: Explaining stimulus generalization, Shepard gives the example of bird that has experience of one previous worm generalizing to decide if another worm is edible.
Mental rotation task. Cube assemblages based on test drawings used by Shepard and Metzler. Two-dimensional figures similar to those used in work by Shepard and Cooper.
Shepard tables illusion: The two "tabletops" are identical parallelogramsAwards
About this person
He studied mental rotation, and was an inventor of non-metric multidimensional scaling, a method for representing certain kinds of statistical data in a graphical form that can be comprehended by humans. The optical illusion called Shepard tables and the auditory illusion called Shepard tones are named for him.
The same award as Roger
David H. HubelBoth received George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience
James McClellandBoth received Rumelhart Prize
Shimon UllmanBoth received Rumelhart PrizeDavid PremackBoth received George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive NeuroscienceJohn R. AndersonBoth received Rumelhart PrizeRichard ShiffrinBoth received Rumelhart Prize