Şeyda Özçalışkan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University, Atlanta. After receiving her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, she joined the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago, first as a postdoctoral fellow (2002-2003), and then as a Research Associate (2003-2008). Her interests are reflected in two main lines of research: (1) whether gesture constitutes a robust aspect of the language-learning process, remaining preserved across different learners, and (2) whether gesture shows the language-specific patterns found in children’s speech, varying systematically across structurally different languages. Following these two lines of inquiry, she seeks to understand the process of language development and how gesture serves as part of the mechanism of change in this process across different learners and different linguistic environments. Her more recent work deals with the patterns of gesture use in congenitally blind speakers learning structurally different languages.
