Carolien Torenvliet

I joined d’Arc as a PhD-student in January 2019 under supervision of prof. dr. Hilde Geurts and dr. Annabeth Groenman. I obtained my Research Master degree in Neuropsychology at the University of Amsterdam in 2018. During this time I expanded my knowlegde on cognitive aging and advanced statistical methods. I aim to use this combination of skills during my PhD project.

During my PhD project I focus on cognitive aging in autism spectrum condition. I aim to understand which components of cognition (e.g. memory, language, planning) might decline more rapidly or slowly in aging autistic adults in comparison to aging in non-autistic adults. Also, I aim to see whether this is true for all, or only some autistic adults by creating integrated models of cognition. Lastly, I aim to gain further knowledge on how autistic adults approach cognitive challenges, by investigating their cognitive style and strategies, and how this might differ from non-autistic adults. I will use a large cross-sectional dataset and try to validate the cross-sectional findings longitudinally by testing a large sample of adults with and without autism from the age of 30 to 90 at multiple timepoints.