Nicholas John Seymour Mackintosh. 9 July 1935—8 February 2015

Abstract

Nicholas Mackintosh was an experimental psychologist whose principal goal was to understand the basic mechanisms of learning and cognition, largely through research with animals. The two textbooks that he wrote on this topic synthesized a vast body of research and set it within a theoretical context of association formation that has remained dominant for over 40 years. He developed a formal theory of the relationship between attention and learning that had an immediate impact and can be expected to be the foremost theory of its kind for many years to come. He was also a prolific experimenter, whose ingenious experiments were remarkable for the theoretical insights they offered into the mechanisms of learning in a wide range of species. Towards the end of his career, he developed an interest in the measurement of human intelligence. The textbook that followed from this interest is one of the most authoritative ever written on the topic.