People – Studies in Language and Bilingualism (SiLaB)

Aslı Aktan-Erciyes, PhD (Lab Director)

Aslı Aktan-Erciyes is the principal investigator of the SiLab. She is mainly interested in how language and cognition interact and how bilingualism influences this interaction. She has obtained her BA in Business Administration from Boğaziçi University, her MA and PhD in Psychological Sciences again from Boğaziçi University. Upon completion of her Ph.D., she worked as a post-doctoral researcher for a year at the Language and Cognition Lab at Koç University.

Graduate Research Assistants

Elif Orakçı (Lab Manager)

Elif is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Kadir Has University. She obtained her BA and MA from the Psychology Department at METU. She has been working as a research assistant in the Psychology Department at Istanbul University. Her research focuses on the interaction between the perspective of the speaker’s gestures and children’s spatial performances on visuospatial maps. She is interested in spatial and language development, multimodal communication, and audience-design studies.

İlayda Güngör

İlayda Güngör is MA student in the Psychology department at Kadir Has University. She completed her BA degree in Guidance and Psychological Counseling and Psychology departments at MEF University. She worked on meta-epistemological evaluations of high school and college students in their social and moral reasoning from developmental perspective in her (BA) graduation thesis. Her research interest relies on metacognitive development including metalinguistic processes. She focuses on investigating how metacognitive processes relate to language development in the context of reasoning and narrative.

Edanur Sürmeneli

Eda is MA student in the Developmental Psychology program at Kadir Has University, where she works with Aslı Aktan-Erciyes. She received her BA degree from Boğaziçi University. Currently, she is involved in a TUBITAK-funded research project led by Aslı Aktan-Erciyes that investigates complex counterfactual processes in adulthood and how adults’ and children’s performances differ in such processes. Her research interests focus on the development of counterfactual thinking and bilingualism. She plans to further explore how these domains relate to cognitive and developmental processes across childhood.

Betül İset

Betül has completed her MA and is currently working as a research assistant at the Turkish-German University. Her primary research interests focus on the development of children’s language and cognitive abilities.

Selin Berjin İke

Selin is an MA student in Kadir Has University. Currently she is working in Dr. Aslı Aktan Erciyes’ TUBITAK project studying developmental trajectory of causal language. She holds a BSc from Middle East Technical University and is generally interested in socio-cognitive development of children from vulnerable populations.

Undergraduate Assistants

Bekir Buğra Tuğrul

Bekir Buğra Tuğrul is a third-year undergraduate psychology student at Kadir Has University. His academic interests focus on vulnerable populations, language, and cognition, particularly how language influences psychological processes and social interactions. He aims to explore the psychological factors affecting vulnerable populations and their well-being.

Elif Asya Yılmaz

Asya is a third year student at Kadir Has University, also pursuing double major in Molecular Biology and Genetics. Her research interests lie in cognitive psychology, particularly in individual differences in cognitive processes and the relationship between attachment styles and information processing. She is also interested in the cognitive mechanisms underlying language learning, decision-making, and problem-solving.

Beyza Helvacıoğlu

Beyza is a third-year undergraduate Psychology student at Kadir Has University. Her academic interests center on time perception, creativity, and quantitative analysis. She actively contributes to the SiLaB’s projects and aspire to become a dedicated researcher in the social sciences.

Ceren Uymur

Ceren is a third year student at Kadir Has University. Her research interests include developmental and sports psychology. She is particularly interested in language acquisition, bilingualism, and the cognitive processes underlying athletic performance.

Ahmet Selim Göveç

Selim is a third-year psychology student at Kadir Has University. His academic interests mostly focus on how gender norms and roles affect individuals developmentally and socially. He is also excited to explore the impact of these gender roles from a neuroscientific perspective. Additionally, he wants to examine the effects of parentification and the reasons behind becoming parentified. He is currently working on the lab’s TÜBİTAK project.

Namık Kemal Deliboz

Namık is a third year psychology student at Istanbul University, where he is also pursuing a minor in Linguistics. He additionally studies Computer Programming at AUZEF. His research interests lie in cognitive psychology, particularly how bilingualism relates to cognitive processes such as attention and memory.

Müzeyyen Tatar

Müzeyyen is a third-year Psychology student at Kadir Has University, interested in children’s cognitive, social, emotional and language development, particularly the effects of bilingualism on children’s skills. Through her volunteer works, she is committed to supporting children’s well-being and development.

Beyzanur Öztürk

Beyza is a third-year Foreign Language Education student at Boğaziçi University. Her academic interests include first and second language acquisition, early language development, and the role of technology in children’s communication. She aims to contribute to research on language and cognition while deepening her understanding of the processes
underlying language use.

Aylin Aygün

Aylin is a third-year psychology student at Kadir Has University, also pursuing a double major in Business Administration. Her interests lie primarily in cognitive psychology, particularly in attention, perception, and memory. She is also interested in how language shapes the construction and expression of autobiographical memories as well as our perception of events and time.

Elanur Kaçar

Ela is a third-year psychology student at Boğaziçi University, interested in children’s cognitive, emotional, social, and language development, with a focus on trauma, stress, and attachment. She is dedicated to interdisciplinary approaches that integrate developmental science, culture, and clinical practice, and aims to contribute to research and interventions that support children and young people.

Deryanur Sayğın

Deryanur is a third-year undergraduate student at Kadir Has University, pursuing a double major in Psychology and Molecular Biology and Genetics. Her research interests lies at the intersection of biology, cognitive psychology, and nutritional neuroscience, focusing on how biological mechanisms, nutritional factors, and food access collectively influence cognitive processes and human development.

Betül Aslan

Betül is a third-year psychology student at Kadir Has University. She is interested in the development of social, cognitive, and emotional skills in children. She is part of the Children and Family Lab.

Alumni

Ahmet Mete Durmuş

Mete is a fourth-year psychology student at Kadir Has University. His academic interests focus on the interaction between language and cognition, particularly the role of language-learning mechanisms within this relationship. He is especially interested in how spatial language influences spatial cognition in early childhood. His goal is to investigate how spatial terms are acquired and how this learning process contributes to the development of spatial cognitive abilities.

Bera Sena Yiğit

Bera Sena is a third-year psychology student at Boğaziçi University. She is mainly interested in the intersection of language and memory, particularly the impact of narratives on memory formation. Additionally, she is eager to explore the relationship between PTSD and memory, focusing on how traumatic narratives are processed and stored in the brain. Through her role as a co-moderator in the OpenPsy reading group, she has gained valuable experience in literature review and collaborative research discussion. Driven by an interest in brain plasticity, she seeks to understand how the neural representations of language and memory ultimately influence our subjective experience of reality.

Özlem Kurt

Özlem graduated from Kadir Has University with a degree in psychology and is currently preparing for her master’s studies. She is interested in the psychology of language within the field of cognitive psychology and aims to develop her career in this direction. Her areas of interest include spatial language, the use of gestures and facial expressions, thinking styles, and the underlying cognitive processes.

Elif Ayça Yiğit

Elif Ayça completed her undergraduate in psychology at Kadir Has University. She has been involved with the lab’s TUBITAK project as an assistant. Her research interests include child and language development with particular focus on bilingualism and language learning effects on children. She is currently a research assistant on a cross-cultural project.

Songül Kandemir

Songül completed her MA at Kadir Has University. Her thesis title was “How are maternal and paternal causal language inputs associated with children’s causal language production and counterfactual thinking?”

Pınar Karataş

Pınar completed her MA at Kadir Has University. Her thesis title was “The relationship between bilingualism and creativity in preschool children.” Her research interests are creativity, L2 acquisition, bilingualism, and executive functions.

Elif Altın

Elif completed her MA at Kadir Has University. Her thesis title was “Left to right or right to left? Effect of writing direction on time perception in bilingual adults.” She is interested in bilingualism, the relationship between language and cognition, and moral decision-making in a second language.

Betül Firdevs Zengin

Betül completed her MA at Kadir Has University. Her thesis title was “The effects of second language proficiency and language distance on young adults’ executive functioning performance.”

Pınar Öztürk-Atlı

Pınar is an MA student at Kadir Has University. Her research interests are the evaluation of explanation quality, theory of mind ability in early childhood, and its effect on selective trust. She is also interested in studies in the theory of mind studies on bilingual children.

Tuğba Güler

Tuğba is an MA student at Kadir Has University under the supervision of Dr. Aslı Aktan-Erciyes. Her general research interests focus on the association between parenting and the cognitive development of children. Particularly, she is curious about the effects of parent-child interactions on the language acquisition process and theory of mind skills of preschoolers.

Büşra Sena Can

Büşra Sena is an MA student at Kadir Has University. Her research interests are language and memory, second language proficiency, and mind relation. She still continues her research on the relationship of recall in L1-Turkish and L2-English emotionally charged words. Her study was to determine whether the recall of emotionally charged words has the same intensity as the first language.

Açelya Yılmaz

Açelya is a third-year psychology student at Kadir Has University. She is interested in understanding how growing up bilingual affects children’s emotional intelligence and the impact of learning a new language on children in the coming years. She aims to examine the effects of growing up bilingual on their social lives and cognitive development.

Yağmur Sağlam

ğmur is a third-year psychology student at Kadir Has University. Her research interests focus on children’s cognitive, emotional, social, and language development, with a particular emphasis on trauma, stress, and attachment in children. With a strong dedication to SiLaB’s research on bilingualism, language development, narrative competence, executive functions, and creativity, she value its holistic approach to understanding children’s development.

Bilgesu Etli

Bilgesu is a third-year student at Kadir Has University, majoring in psychology. Additionally, she is one of the founding members of the Ethics and Philosophy Club at our school. Her main interests include researching the significant factors that influence a child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development, focusing specifically on understanding the pivotal role mothers play in these aspects.

Ece Yılmaz

Ece completed her BA degree in the Department of Psychology at Kadir Has University with a university/faculty/department degree (1st place) and high honors. Currently, she is an MA student at Kadir Has University in Psychological Sciences.

Kardelen Koç

Kardelen completed her BA in theatre and psychology at Kadir Has University. Currently, she is an MA student at Koç University in developmental psychology.

Ayşenur Verkhovets

Ayşenur completed her undergraduate education in the Department of Psychology at Kadir Has University. Afterward, she continued her education in the Clinical Psychology Department at Beykoz University.

Asude Firdevs Emara

After completing her BA in Boğaziçi University, Translation & Interpreting Studies, she has been a part of many labs as a research assistant. Her main research interests are language and cognition, as well as bilingualism.

Berfin Mısırlı

Berfin graduated from the Department of Psychology (BA) at Kadir Has University with second place and high honors. Her research interests include language acquisition, cognitive skills, bilingualism, and cognitive and affective neuroscience.

Karla Tüzütürk

Karla graduated from Kadir Has University with a degree in Psychology in 2023. She is interested in studying the differences in the development of social, cognitive, and emotional skills in bilingual children.

Klodya Üçkardeş

Klodya graduated from Psychology (BA) at Kadir Has University with an honors degree in 2023. Her research interest is, as a bilingual person, how affects and helps to be bilingual in language skills.

Larissa Tatyosoğlu

Larissa graduated from Psychology (BA) at Kadir Has University . She is primarily interested in studying the interaction between children and technology, robot-child interaction, and human-robot interaction.

Melike Filiz

Melike graduated from Kadir Has University (BA). Her research interests are child-parent interaction, and cognitive and language development. Specifically, language acquisition, attention, and theory of mind.

Özden Yüksek

Özden graduated from Kadir Has University (BA). She conducted the TUBITAK 2209-A project to investigate the contribution gesture use to preschool children’s word recall ability.

Petek Keçe

Petek graduated from the psychology department at Kadir Has University in 2023. She is interested in the effects of being bilingual on various skills of children, such as theory of mind and emotional intelligence. This is her second year in SiLab.