CSHC - Center for the Study of Human Cognition

Professor of Cognitive Psychology

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Fax: (+47) 22 84 50 01
Telephone: (+47) 22 84 51 26

I am a cognitive psychologist, with a particular interest in memory. I did my first degree at the University of Exeter, and my PhD at the University of Nottingham. Since then I have worked at Université Pierre Mendès France and the Hôpital Michallon (Grenoble), Université de Savoie (Chambéry), and the University of Tromsø. I was made full professor at the University of Oslo in 2003. In addition to lab-based research on basic cognitive functions, I try to apply experimental cognitive methods in unconventional settings, where, I believe, there is a lot of unrealised potential.

Three main topics being explored are

Trauma, PTSD and cognition
What cognitive differences are there between PTSD patients and trauma-exposed controls? Does a deficit in inhibition best explain the differences? How trauma-specific are the deficits? For more detail, see in the Projects section.

Face naming
How are semantic and lexical memory organised so that although normals don't name people without knowing who they are, some Alzheimers patients do, and normals can be quicker at naming than categorising for very well-known people? Why do some names persistently cause tip-of-the-tongue states? My main collaborators are Professor Serge Brédart, University of Liège, and Nhung Tuyet Thi Le, University of Oslo.

Illiteracy and cognition
How do illiterates think differently to literate people, and how much of the difference is due to schooling? See http://folk.uio.no/timothb/ for an account of our work in Guatemala.