Simone Bijvoet

Originally I am from the Netherlands, and completed my BSc (in 2007) and MSc (in 2009) in Clinical and Developmental Psychology at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). I have always had the wish to live in another country for a while, so after my graduation I moved to Scotland. At the University of Aberdeen, I demonstrated and tutored Statistics to MSc students, and volunteered for ChildLine as a switchboarder. In 2010, I got awarded a Departmental Studentship from the department of Psychology at the University of Stirling. My interests outside Psychology are (improvisational) acting, singing, hiking, and recently scuba diving.

Supervisor : Elena Hoicka

I am interested in pretend play behaviour of two- an three-year-olds. The main question I will be trying to answer is whether these children can produce novel pretend play rather than just copying the pretend behaviour of others. Furthermore, I will be looking at the creativity of these children and study whether children who are better in thinking of different uses for one object (divergent thinking) will also show more novel pretend behaviour.