International Trainees

Saara Nolvi, M.A.

Thesis: Individual, family and teacher level correlates of behavioral and cognitive school engagement
Publications: 7
Manuscripts in Preparation/Under Review: 5
Conference Presentations: 11
Contact: saara.nolvi@utu.fi

Saara Nolvi is from Finland and is currently a psychology doctoral student at the University of Turku. Before starting graduate studies in psychology, Saara studied at the University of Jyväskylä, also in Finland, and graduated in 2011 with a Master of Arts in Special Education. She continued her studies in Jyväskylä and graduated in 2013 with Master of Arts in Psychology. Since her graduation, Saara has worked as child psychologist in Turku University Hospital (TUH) in the Department of Child Neurology and in a multidisciplinary private clinic. Saara has experience in developmental and and neuropsychological assessment of children aged 2-16 having neurological problems such as ADHD, LDs, ASDs and autism, TBIs, seizures and other developmental disabilities.

Although initially interested in student engagement, Saara became increasingly interested in neuropsychology and neuroscience, and subsequently started working towards her Ph.D. at the University of Turku in South-Western Finland. Currently, she is conducting research, including work towards the completion of her Ph.D., in the context of the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, which is a large medical cohort study investigating children's neurodevelopment and self-regulation.

In the FinnBrain Study, Saara is responsible for research pertaining to child temperament, executive function and emotion regulation. In the autumn of 2013, Dr. Bridgett began working as Saara's supervisor and as a collaborator for the FinnBrain study, and, as such, during the years 2014 and 2015, Saara received training in temperament coding and research in Emotion Regulation and Temperament Lab in NIU. She is especially interested in researching the early biomarkers of emotion regulation development and emotion regulation associations with cognitive skills.