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Nora Newcombe

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Nora Newcombe

  • College of Liberal Arts

    • Psychology and Neuroscience

      • Laura H. Carnell Professor

      • James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow

      • Affiliated Faculty

        Programs

        • Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies

Curriculum Vitae  

Expertise

Cognition and Cognitive Development

Biography

Nora S. Newcombe, Ph.D., is a Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. Dr. Newcombe was educated at Antioch College, where she graduated with a major in psychology in 1972 and at Harvard University, where she received her Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Relations in 1976. She taught previously at Penn State University. Her research in cognition and cognitive development has centered on spatial cognition and on episodic memory, along with translational work on STEM education. She served as the PI of the NSF-funded Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC) from 2006-2018, headquartered at Temple and involving Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania as primary partners.

She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. Honors include the Rumelhart Medal from the Cognitive Science Society, Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the Society for Research in Child Development, the William James Fellow Award from APS, the Howard Crosby Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the George Miller Award and the G. Stanley Hall Awards from APA, the Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science, also from APA. She has received three mentor awards, from Women in Cognitive Science, APA Division 7, and APS. She is a fellow of four divisions of the American Psychological Association (General, Experimental, Developmental, and Psychology of Women), of the Association for Psychological Science, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and the University of Otago.

Website

Selected Publications

  • Cohen, S.S., Ngo, C.T., Olson, I.R. & Newcombe, N.S. (2025). Pattern separation and pattern completion in early childhood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • Newcombe, N.S. (2024). Learning to live in the spatial world: Experience-expectant and experience-dependent input. Developmental Review.
  • Ngo, C. T., Buchberger, E. S., Phuc T. U. Nguyen, Newcombe, N. S., & Werkle-Bergner, M. (2024).Building a cumulative science of memory development. Developmental Review, 72, 101119.
  • Bevandić, J., Chareyron, L. J., Bachevalier, J., Cacucci, F., Genzel, L., Newcombe, N. S., Vargha-Khadem, F., Ólafsdóttir, H.F. (2024). Episodic memory development: Bridging animal and human research. Neuron, 112, 1060 1080. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2024.01.020
  • Jeffery, K.J., Cheng, K., Newcombe, N.S., Bingman, V.P. & Menzel, R. (2024). Unpacking the navigation toolbox: Insights from comparative cognition. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 291(2016), 20231304.
  • Uttal, D.H., McKee, K., Simms, N., Hegarty, M. & Newcombe, N.S. (2024). How can we best assess spatial skills? Practical and conceptual challenges. Journal of Intelligence, 12(1), 8.
  • Newcombe, N.S. (2024). What have we learned from research on the “geometric module”? Learning and Behavior, 52, 14-18.
  • Tian, J., Bennett-Pierre, G., Tavassolie, N., Newcombe, N.S., Weinraub, M., Hindman, A.GH., Newton,K.J. & Gunderson, E.A. (2023). A growth-mindset message leads parents to choose more challenging learning activities. Journal of Intelligence, 11(10), 193.
  • Jaeger, A.J., Weisberg, S.M., Nazareth, A. & Newcombe, N.S. (2023). Using a picture (or a thousand words) for supporting spatial knowledge of a complex virtual environment. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 8, Article 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-023-00503-z .
  • Viegut, A. A., Resnick, I., Miller-Cotto, D., Newcombe, N. S., & Jordan, N. C. (2023). Tracking informal fraction knowledge and its correlates across first grade. Developmental Psychology, 59(10), 1739 - 1756.
    https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001581.
  • Benear, S.L., Popal, H.S., Zheng, Y., Tanriverdi, B., Murty, V.P., Perlman, S.B.,Olson, I.R., &Newcombe, N.S. (2023). Setting boundaries: Development of neural and behavioral event cognition in early childhood. Developmental Science, 26,6, e13409. 

Courses Taught

Graduate

  • Introduction to Psychology (Team), Graduate Seminars

Media Mentions