Henry L. Roediger

Henry L. Roediger, III, has distinguished himself as an educator in the area of psychological studies.

Henry L. Roediger

He is currently the chair of the Department of Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Born in Roanoke, Va., and raised in Danville, Va., Roediger attended Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., graduating magna cum laude in 1969, and then earned his doctorate in 1973 from Yale University.

Roediger became an assistant professor at Purdue immediately after getting his doctorate and spent 15 years on the faculty here, except for three years as visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 1976-78 and 1981-82. In 1988, he was appointed professor of psychology at Rice University and spent eight years in Houston. In 1996, he moved to St. Louis into his current position as department chair at Washington University.

Roediger’s research has centered on human learning and memory, and he has published on many different topics within that area. He has written more than 160 articles and chapters on memory for publication while also co-authoring three textbooks.

His research interests over the years have included the effectiveness of retrieval cues in reviving memories, the use and effectiveness of memory devices, cases of spontaneous remembering, inhibitory processes in retrieval, dissociations between implicit and explicit measures of memory, factors responsible for memory illusions and false memories, aging and the arousal of illusory memories, applications of cognitive psychological principles to improving education, and metaphors used to explain memory and mental processes.

Among the organizations supporting his research are the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Aging, and National Science Foundation.

According to a 1996 study by the Institute of Scientific Information, Roediger’s papers had the greatest impact, measured by their average number of citations, in the field of psychology for the five-year period from 1990-94.

Roediger is the 2003-04 president of the American Psychological Society, the largest psychology organization dedicated to scientific psychology. Previously, he was elected to the governing board of the Psychonomic Society (1986-91) and served as its chair in 1989-90.