Fields of expertise
My fields of expertise include cognitive foundations of language and literacy development. I have been studying monolingual children and adults speaking various languages to understand the language-independent–as compared to language-specific– aspects of literacy development. Another area is literacy development in a second language and the cross-language transfer between the two languages of an individual. More recently I have also been focusing on affective (e.g., emotion, motivation, self efficacy) aspects of literacy development. Another area of interest is the impact of broader sociocultural contexts (e.g., gender and income inequities) on human development. With colleagues at the Mother Child Education Foundation in Turkey (https://www.acev.org/en/), we have been creating programs for women’s empowerment through the development of their literacy, numeracy and critical thinking skills. Another research area is how immigrants develop language and literacy skills of their host countries. Finally, I am also interested how we comprehend complex information in first and second languages and ways to facilitate knowledge acquisition using research conducted in learning and cognition.

Institution / Country
Distinguished Global Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA (retired since 2020)

Languages
Turkish (native) English(near native)

Membership and functions in professional organisations

  • Associate Editor Applied Psycholinguistics, (2006-2013)
  • Editorial Boards:
    • Journal of Literacy Research
    • Reading Research Quarterly 2008-2010; 2013-present
  •  Chair American Educational Research Association, Adult Literacy and Education SIG
  • Reviewer for 30+ journals

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