What are you going to work with at IFIKK?
I have just joined the DEVCOM project (led by Ingrid Falkum) as a PhD fellow. The broader project investigates whether expectations of convention adherence influence children’s developing figurative comprehension. Within this, I am going to be investigating whether there are parallels between children’s contra-belief reasoning (e.g., thinking hypothetically or in pretend) and their understanding of different types of verbal metaphor.
Can you tell us a bit about your research interests?
I am interested in how the social context of communicative interactions (i.e., the features of the interaction outside of the utterance) guides online language processing. Before starting this work I did research on different factors that influence preverbal infants’ understanding of communication and other types of social interactions. So, for example, asking what do babies think are the necessary components of successful communication? Do they think that speech is the only way of getting a point across or do they consider that we use a variety of skills when interacting with other people?
I also worked for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation as one of their in-house social and behavioural scientists. This work mainly dealt with large-scale interventions and population segmentation, but more recently I started a project looking at the interaction between children’s moral reasoning development and their involvement with conservation work.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
My spare time is organized completely around walking my dog Fela. We're constantly trying to find new and interesting walks so I am excited to explore more of Norway’s nature. I was also recently introduced to the magic culinary ingredient that is fresh curry leaves. A by-product of that learning is a new ‘hobby’ of searching for Asian grocers and watching people go grocery shopping in Oslo on YouTube!