The University of Chicago
Department of Psychology
5848 South University Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60637
Calla Trofatter
Background
Calla Trofatter graduated in 2005 from The University of Chicago with a degree in Biology and a specialization in Neuroscience. In the summer of 2005 she accepted a full-time position at UC as a research assistant for an ongoing large-scale longitudinal psychology study, the Language Development Project. For the LDP, she collected data in the Chicago area and around the country, and participated in several specific research projects as well as general data analysis in preparation for an academic career. In 2008 she began a course of graduate study at UC, and is currently working towards her PhD in Developmental Psychology. She completed her Masters/Trial Research Project entitled "Parent and Child Gesture in Early Language Development" in 2009. She works primarily with Susan Goldin-Meadow.
Research Interests
Calla is interested in gesture production and comprehension, embodied cognition, first language acquisition and cognitive development. In one line of research, she investigates how children use speech and gesture differently over time as they develop into adult speakers, and what individual differences might tell us about this process. In another, she is exploring the sensorimotor properties of gesture, and the similarities and dissimilarities between co-speech gestures and other, less speech-related actions and body movements.
Recent Presentations
Trofatter, C., Özçalışkan, S., Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Gesturing helps speakers produce more complex speech. Talk presented by C. Trofatter in 2008 at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL.
Özçalışkan, S., Trofatter, C., Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Do early sex differences in gesture predict later language outcomes for boys and girls? Talk presented by S. Özçalışkan in 2011 at the 12th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
