News Release

British Academy and Wiley-Blackwell announce result of 2011 Wiley Prize

Psychologist Dr. Michael Tomasello studies the unique cognitive processes which distinguish humans from great apes

Grant and Award Announcement

Wiley

Hoboken, N.J. July 26, 2011 — American developmental psychologist, Dr. Michael Tomasello, has been named as this year's recipient of the Wiley Prize in Psychology, awarded by the British Academy in partnership with Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE: JWa, JWb).

The £5,000 prize for 'lifetime achievement by an outstanding international scholar' is in recognition of Tomasello's work identifying the unique cognitive and cultural processes that distinguish humans from their nearest primate relatives, the great apes. Professor Tomasello also works on child language and is a strong critic of generative grammar theory, expounded by British Academy Fellow Noam Chomsky, subscribing instead to the cognitive linguistics theory.

Tomasello was a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, through the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, he has performed research on the social cognition of great apes at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center in Leipzig, Germany.

"I am surprised and honored to receive this award," said Dr Tomasello. "No one doing research ever expects anything like this. We are engaged in a labor of love and prizes are always surprises."

"We are delighted to be able to recognise the considerable achievements of Professor Tomasello by awarding him the 2011 Wiley Prize," said Sir Adam Roberts, President of the British Academy. "His signal work has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of social cognition and linguistics."

"John Wiley and Sons, Inc., has a deep commitment to supporting research and publication in psychology and linguistics, and is delighted that the third British Academy Wiley prize is being awarded to Dr. Michael Tomasello for his distinguished work in those fields, including some key contributions in Child Development, Developmental Science and other Wiley publications," said Philip Carpenter, Vice President and Managing Director, Social Science and Humanities at Wiley-Blackwell.

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