- Professor of Developmental Psychology
- Vice Dean (research), the Faculty of Arts and Sciences 2012-2014
- Head, the Developmental Research Group
- Head, Infant and Child Lab
Education/professional training
- Licensed psychologist (Sweden, 1981, Norway 2003)
- PhD (Penn State University, USA 1988)
- Licensed psychotherapist (Sweden 1989)
- Specialist in clinical psychology (Sweden 1997)
Previous positions
Clinical
Clinical child psychologist, the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic, Göteborg, Sweden, 1976-1989
School psychologist, Göteborg, Sweden, 1977-1978
Privately employed psychotherapist, part-time, Göteborg, Sweden, 1984-1990
Academic
Instructor, Dept. of Psychology, Penn State Univ., 1984
Assistant and associate professor, Dept. of Psychology, Göteborg University, 1987-2001
Guest research professor, The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters,1996-97
Associate professor, Dept of Special Education, Göteborg University, 1994-99
Adjunct professor, Norwegian University of Technology, Trondheim, 2000-05
Professor and Head, Centre of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Univ. of Bergen, Norway, 2001-05
Research areas
Infant development (cognition, communication, imitation)
Developmental psychopathology (autism, language impairment)
Literacy (multimedia based intervention programs)
Selected ongoing projects
Infant socio-cognitive development
Infants’ reactive saccades in social and non-social contexts. A project conducted by the Nordic Infant Network.
Children with Severe Hearing Impairment
Understanding minds: How early cochlear implantation affects Theory of Mind in children with profound hearing impairment. In collaboration with professor B Lyxell, LiU, Dr A Sundqvist, LiU, and MD PhD R Jönsson, Sahlgrenska university hospital, Göteborg. Grant: Research Foundation for the Hard of Hearing (2015)
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Social interaction and imitation for young children with autism - a randomized study (SIMBA). A joint project with the Dept. of Psychology and the Gillberg Centre, University of Gothenburg. In collaboration with B Spjut Jansson, clinical psychologist and assoc. prof T Tjus, University of Gothenburg.
Development of children's stereotypes
Mental presentations of gender expressed as implicit and explicit social knowledge in children and adults. A collaboration between University of Washington, USA, and Linköping University. PI = Dr. Anett Sundqvist, Linköping University.
Previous projects
- Memory for events in early infancy.
- Long-term memory processes in early infancy: Exploring the boundaries of nonverbal recall in preverbal infants.
- Long-term memory processes in infancy: Individual differences and electrophysiological correlats.
- The importance of joint attention, memory and communication for the development of mentalization - a longitudinal study of children with autism.
- MIMA: Memory, imitation and autism.
- Effects of computerized training for reading disabled children in grade 2.
- Children in Bergen. A longitudinal total population study of mental health and development in 7-9 year-old children
- Alarm Distress Baby Scale - en validation.
