Holding strong socialist principles Neil O'Connor forged academic connections with Soviet psychologists and neuropsychologists, for example, Alexander Luria.

[7] In this way, he helped spread their often advanced ideas on learning and attention in the education of children with mental deficiency among Western psychologists.

[citation needed] Other members of this small MRC Unit were Uta Frith[1][2] and Rick Cromer.

Rick Cromer (born 1940 - died prematurely ca 1990) was a psycholinguist whose PhD thesis on early language acquisition had been supervised by Roger Brown, at Harvard.

Students of Neil O'Connor include Kim Kirsner, John Sloboda, Barbara Dodd and Linda Pring.

[8] After retiring in 1982, Neil O'Connor continued to work with Beate Hermelin on special talent (Savants), an area where they pioneered experimental research.

After O'Connor's death in a traffic accident in 1997 Beate Hermelin told the story of their joint work on this topic.