Psychological Center Seeks Financial Aid

The University's new Center for Cognitive Studies has received grants of $270,000 to date and expects to negotiate for further funds this month in its campaign to establish working facilities for the Center.

Currently, the Center, initiated this fall, has a staff of eight faculty members but no permanent home. In the next two weeks its directors will meet with officials from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Mental Health to complete arrangements for expected grants from these two government agencies.

The Center has received $125,000 from the Carnegie Foundation and $20,000 from the Ford Foundation for its novel research program, which concerns "the nature, organization, and transformation of human knowledge." Principal support will come from the University in the form of professorial salaries, in a substantial monetary grant, and in the gift of a building.

Site for Center

Jerome S. Bruner, professor of Psychology and co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, said yesterday that the staff will eventually take over President Elliot's old home, at 61 Kirkland St., and a new wing to this structure built by the University, or will occupy a new structure built on the site. Plans for the new home of the Center will be announced later in the fall.

Led by Bruner and George A. Miller, professor of Psychology, the Center has begun exploration into five areas of the processes of human cognition. The staff will conduct projects on the nature of human perception, learning, memory, and thinking, with reference to how people organize information and use it for solving problems.

Also under study are the development of cognitive processes, the formulating and testing of theories of cognitive operations, the nature of human communication, and the uses of the processes in education.