J. McVicker Hunt

J. McVicker Hunt (1906 - 1991) was the first to identify neuroplasticity of the children brain.

Influences
Student of: Guilford
Time Period: Contemporary Explorations

Education
University of Nebraska in London (BA, 1929; MA, 1930)
Cornell University (Ph.D., 1933) under Madison Bentley
New York Psychiatric Institute and Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts (Postdoc)

Career
Brown University
University of Illinois (1951)

Major Contributions
Offered an alternative conception of intelligence as an information-processing system.
Advocated of compensatory education.

Ideas & Interests
(Researched with rats on the effects of early rearing environment to examine psychoanalytic insights into the development of personality characteristics.)
(Examined the effects of child-rearing practices from a broad historical perspective , and became impressed with the evidence for plasticity in intellectual development.)
Children are reared in early-impoverished environment, which results in intellectual deficit.
His thought that environments are much more self-selected or self-created, and therefore, posited the importance of intrinsic motivation for intellectual development.
(This led him urge research for optimal educational programs that would foster this idea.)

Publications
Intelligence and Experience (1961)
Personality and Behavior Disorder (1944)