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Elaine Reese

Email elaine.reese@otago.ac.nz
Tel +64 3 479 8441

Professor Elaine Reese is the co-leader of Kia Tīmata Pai (To Start Well), a national intervention trial with BestStart early childhood centres funded by the Wright Family Foundation. She previously served as the Education Domain Leader on a longitudinal birth cohort study, Growing Up in New Zealand. Elaine has authored over 130 papers and a book for parents, Tell Me a Story: Sharing Stories to Enrich Your Child's World (Oxford University Press). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and has received grants from the Marsden Fund, the Children's Research Fund of the Ministry of Social Development, and the National Institute of Child Health and Development in the US.

She has served as Editor of the Journal of Cognition and Development, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Cognitive Development, Infant and Child Development, Narrative Inquiry, and Reading Research Quarterly.

Elaine joined the Department in 1993. She has over 30 years of university teaching experience, at both graduate and undergraduate levels.

Teaching

Research interests

  • The development of children's and adolescents' autobiographical memory, language, and literacy
  • Social influences on children's development, especially the way that parents' and teachers' conversations enrich children's language and socioemotional development

Find out more about Professor Reese's research interests

Publications

Marshall, S., Rea, M., & Reese, E. (2024). Personality traits and narrative identity: Changes in mid-adolescence to emerging adulthood in relation to well-being. Journal of Research in Personality. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104545 Journal - Research Article

Reese, E. (2024). How stories change us: A developmental science of stories from fiction and real life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 240p. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780197747902.001.0001 Authored Book - Research

Swearingen, I., Moros, S., Schaughency, E., & Reese, E. (2024). Quality of educator-toddler conversations varies across activity settings in centre-based ECEC. International Journal of Early Years Education. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/09669760.2024.2389826 Journal - Research Article

Russell, S., Bird, A. L., Waldie, K., Peterson, E., Morton, S. M. B., Atatoa Carr, P. E., Salmon, K., & Reese, E. (2024). From infancy to eight: How early maternal mental health, emotion reminiscing, and language shape children’s mental health. Development & Psychopathology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1017/S0954579424000919 Journal - Research Article

Peterson, E. R., Sharma, T., Bird, A., Henderson, A. M. E., Ramgopal, V., Reese, E., & Morton, S. M. B. (2024). How mothers talk to their children about failure, mistakes and setbacks is related to their children's fear of failure. British Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12685 Journal - Research Article

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