Leena Maria Heikkola er ny postdoktor på Multiling

Leena Maria er finsk, og har doktorgrad fra Åbo Akademi i Turku, Finland. Hun har studert hvordan kognitiv utmattelse påvirker språk hos mennesker med multippel sklreose.

Leena Maria Heikkola  (foto: Hannu Aaltonen)

Leena Maria skal nå arbeide med prosjektet “Behavioral and linguistic analysis of multilingual speakers with aphasia”, og presenterer seg på engelsk.

“I did my BA in languages here at the University of Oslo. I did my MA in Finnish language and literature at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. For my MA Thesis I studied how language use, mainly dialect and codeswitching, reflect national identities in Finns and Italians living in Oslo. I’ve been working as a Finnish for foreigners / Finnish as a second language teacher on and off since summer 2008, and have also been studying how singing can facilitate learning a second language. I have also done a Fulbright Exchange at Columbia University in New York, where I taught Finnish.

I continued with PhD studies at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. My dissertation was about the effects of cognitive fatigue on language in persons with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). During my studies I also did a 7 month research exchange at the Division of Speech Pathology, University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. In order to study the effects of cognitive fatigue on language in persons with MS, I administered the study subjects a wide neuropsychological test battery, as well as linguistic tasks. The main results of my PhD Study were the following: 1) Persons with MS showed cognitive impairment and cognitive fatigue; 2) Persons with MS showed linguistic impairments in semispontaneous oral stories; 3) There were significant correlations between cognitive fatigue and cognition in general and language, even though the correlations weren’t as clear as the cognitive and linguistic impairments.

I joined Multiling’s project “Studies of Multilingual Aphasia” in the last week of March 2017. The main objective of the project is to provide knowledge on patterns of language use and recovery in multilingual persons with aphasia. In my post doc project I will investigate what kind of impairments multilingual speakers with aphasia exhibit in their L1s and L2s pre- and post-treatment, and what kind of cross-language transfer effects they may show pre- and post-treatment. I will focus on lexical-syntactic and pragmatic language use.

In my free time, I like to sing and compose music, and attend jazz concerts. I also like taking photographs, and enjoy the many restaurants in Oslo with my husband. Our three Maine Coon cats also keep us busy. In addition to my Multiling project, I also have two other research projects still going on in Finland; the first is about how singing affect learning second language, and the second about how Finnish speakers learn to pronounce Italian vowels.”

Av Ellen Evju Jahr
Publisert 5. apr. 2017 12:39 - Sist endret 15. okt. 2019 15:52