John Robert Anderson (psychologist)

John Robert Anderson (born August 27, 1947 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a professor of psychology and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is widely known for his cognitive architecture ACT-R (Anderson, 1993). He has published many papers on cognitive psychology, served as president of the Cognitive Science Society, and received many scientific awards, including one from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.

Anderson was also an early leader in research on intelligent tutoring systems, such as cognitive tutors, and many of Anderson's former students, such as Kenneth Koedinger, have become leaders in that area.

Anderson studied psychology at the University of British Columbia and Stanford from 1964 to 1974. Gordon Bower was his doctoral advisor. He went on teaching at Yale. Since 1978, he has worked as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988 to 1989, he was president of the Cognitive Science Society. In 2004 he won the David E. Rumelhart Prize for Contributions to the Formal Analysis of Human Cognition, and in 2006 he was the recipient of the inaugural Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science.