Gabriella Óturai
Gabriella Óturai, førsteamanuensis, UiT
Main content
- Social-cognitive development
- Imitation
- Object knowledge
- Media education
Research interests: My research interests lie in the area of social-cognitive development, with a special emphasis on imitation and memory development. In my PhD thesis I investigated infants’ memory for different kinds of actions (deferred imitation), and the relation between where they look while observing another person’s actions (eye tracking) and what they subsequently imitate. I am interested in what kinds of actions infants are most likely to imitate at different ages (selective imitation), and how this is influenced by various aspects of the social context.
I have been also involved in studies on the development of categorization and object knowledge, in which we aim to find out about, for example, whether categorization of ambiguous pictures relies on domain-general or domain-specific processes at different stages of development, and how children think about human-made objects and their functions.
In a planned project I aim to explore relations between imitation and other aspects of social-cognitive development, as well as the potential of imitation tests in early detection of developmental delays. In another project I plan to tackle relations between developmental research and media education practices.
I collaborate with researchers at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary and the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.
Contact information: gabriella.oturai@uit.no, https://uit.no/om/enhet/ansatte/
