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Details for Professor Norman Freeman

Personal details
Name Professor Norman Freeman
Job title Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development
Department School of Psychological Science University of Bristol
Contact details This expert can be contacted via the University of Bristol Public Relations Office.

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work+44 (0)117 331 8092
email:
Qualifications M.A., Ph.D.(Cantab.), F.B.Ps.S.
Professional details
Keywords cognition
development
preschool
theory of mind
number
drawing
domain specific learning
Areas of expertise I work in cognition, mostly trying to model and test hypotheses about representational development, where I have invented a few experimental techniques. I focused initially on picture-production and have moved to analysing the conceptual change in children’s beliefs about pictures, their theory of pictures. The application was in art-education, where I have been active.

I published methods for posing simple pictorial puzzles, and rules for inferring children's strategies of bringing visual order onto a page. My second aim had been to acquire a range of cognitive research skills so as to be able flexibly to promote research as and when circumstances demanded. I transferred the same set of research habits collaboratively to publish refereed papers on topics as diverse as phonological impairment, effects of early cardiac surgery, semantic change, infant spatial search, theory-of-mind inference, early counting.