John Spencer

John P. Spencer is a Professor of Psychology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. Prior to arriving in the UK, he was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Iowa and served as the founding Director of the Delta Center (Development and Learning from Theory to Application). He received a Sc.B. with Honors from Brown University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Indiana University in 1998.

Prof. Spencer is the recipient of the Irving J. Saltzman and the J.R. Kantor Graduate Awards from Indiana University, the 2003 Early Research Contributions Award from the Society for Research in Child Development, and the 2006 Robert L. Fantz Memorial Award from the American Psychological Foundation.

His research examines the development of visuo-spatial cognition, word learning, working memory, attention, and executive function with an emphasis on dynamical systems accounts of cognition and action. He has had continuous funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the US National Science Foundation since 2001 and has been a fellow of the American Psychological Association since 2007. He is currently leading an initiative on infant brain health in India funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the UEA Longitudinal Brain Study funded by the US National Institutes of Health. For more information, see https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7320-144X.