Dr. Silven was a Visiting Scientist at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences in 2006. She is a Docent in Developmental and Educational Psychology at both the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki. Before coming to the Institute she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Academy of Finland at the University of Tampere. In the early 1990’s, she became among the first researchers in the world to study the developmental relationships between early parent-child interaction, language acquisition, and (pre)literacy skills from infancy to school age. She has also conducted longitudinal studies on children’s theory of mind development and attachment relationships in families. Her current research with Dr. Patricia Kuhl focuses on early speech perception and vocabulary growth in children growing up in mono- and bilingual homes.
