Karl Edward Zener was a perceptual psychologist

Psychologist

Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...

 best known for his affiliation with Dr. J. B. Rhine and their work in the field of Extra-sensory perception

Extra-sensory perception

Extrasensory perception involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by Frederic Myers, and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy, clairaudience, and...

 or ESP.

Zener received a PhB from the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 in 1923, followed by M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1924 and 1926. He then went on to spend a year as a United States National Research Council

United States National Research Council

The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...

 Fellow at the University of Berlin before returning to the U.S. After a year of teaching psychology at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, Zener took up what was to be a lifelong post with Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

.

The main thrust of Zener's work over the next ten years concerned conditioned responses

Classical conditioning

Classical conditioning is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov...

, and during the 1930s he maintained one of the few Pavlovian

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....

 conditioning laboratories in the U.S. It was also during this time that, along with colleague J.B. Rhine, he devised the card symbols that were used by Rhine in early ESP tests. Rhine called cards bearing these symbols "Zener cards" in honor of his colleague.

Zener's later work focused on theories of perception

Perception

Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...

 and the analysis of perceptual experience. With research partner Dr. Mercedes Gaffron, he identified previously unknown aspects of visual processing and comprehension. The resultant Zener-Gaffron theory combined a psychological analysis of perception with then-contemporary findings from the field of biological neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

.

Zener was the recipient of the only grant ever given for psychological research by the Ford Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

Program in Humanities and the Arts.

Zener was appointed Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Duke University in 1961, after having served there as the director of graduate studies in psychology for nearly twenty years.

The Zener Auditorium (Room 130, Sociology-Psychology Building) of Duke University is named after him.