Rosie’s key research interests lie at the intersection between Cognitive Psychology and Education, with a particular focus on understanding how the Early Years educational environment can impact upon the development of key skills prior to the onset of formal schooling.
Her DPhil is focused on understanding the mathematical environment at preschool and its impact upon the development of mathematical and executive function skills in 3- to 4-year-olds, with a particular focus on children from lower income backgrounds.
Rosie holds an MSc in Developmental Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh and an undergraduate degree in Psychology and French from the University of Liverpool. Her previous experience spans research and education. She was involved in developing and later collecting data on the feasibility of an Early Years mathematics and executive function programme, the ‘ONE’ programme. Prior to this, she worked as a research assistant on projects related to language and executive function development in young children. She has also worked in a number of educational roles with both typically and non-typically developing children.
Publications
- Scerif, G., Blakey, E., Gattas, S., Hawes, Z., Howard, S., Merkley, R., O’Connor, R., & Simms, V. (2023). Making the executive ‘function’ for the foundations of mathematics: the need for explicit theories of change for early interventions. Educational Psychology Review, 25, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09824-3
- Scerif, G., Gattas, S., Godfrey, A., Hawes, Z., Howard, S., Merkley, R., O’Connor, R., & Sučević, J. (2023). Orchestrating numeracy and the executive – ‘the ONE’ programme. The Nuffield Foundation. https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Scerif-Final-report-Fostering-resilience-by-injecting-executive-challenge-into-early-maths.pdf
- Skarabela, B., Ota, M., O’Connor, R., & Arnon, I. (2021). ‘Clap your hands’ or ‘take your hands’? One-year-olds distinguish between frequent and infrequent multiword phrases. Cognition, 2111,104612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104612
Supervisors
Gaia Scerif and Iram Siraj
