Oksana joined the Talwar Research Team in 2014 as a volunteer and completed her undergraduate thesis under the supervision of Dr. Talwar. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in Human Development at McGill University. Her MA thesis focused on children’s attitudes towards negative and positive valence gossip involving friends and classmates. She is currently a Doctoral student in the Human Development Program. Oksana’s dissertation research explores how adolescents perceive cybergossip in group chats versus one-on-one online conversations.
Awards
SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral, 2020-2024
McGill University Graduate Research Enhancement and travel Award, 2020
McGill University Graduate Excellence Fellowship, 2019
McGill University Graduate Research Enhancement and travel Award, 2019
Development: A Canadian Conference on Developmental Psychology Travel Award, 2018
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Joseph-Armand Bombardier Graduate Master’s Scholarship 2017-2018
McGill University Graduate Fellowship Excellence Fellowship, 2017
Association for Psychological Science Travel Award, 2016
Publications
Caivano, O., Leduc, K., & Talwar, V. (2020b). When you think you know: The effectiveness of restrictive mediation on parental awareness of cyberbullying experiences among children and adolescents. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.5817/cp2020-1-2
Caivano, O., Leduc, K., & Talwar, V. (2020a). When is gossiping wrong? The influence of valence and relationships on children’s moral evaluations of gossip. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 38(2), 219-238. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12319
Nagar P.M., Caivano O., Talwar V. (2020). The role of empathy in children’s costly prosocial lie-telling behaviour. Infant and Child Development, 29(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2179
Rothermich, K., Caivano, O., Knoll, L., & Talwar, V. (2019). Do they really mean it? Children’s inference of speaker intentions and the role of age and gender. Language and Speech, 002383091987874. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830919878742
Selected Conference Presentations
Caivano, O., Isik, I., & Talwar, V. (2020, October). Friendly gossip? How peer relationships shape children’s hypothetical reactions to gossip. Association for Moral Education Annual Conference, Ottawa, ON. (Online format)
Caivano, O., & Talwar, V. (2019, July). Is gossip good or bad? Children’s evaluations of positive and negative gossip and their relationship to the sharer and target. International School Psychology Association, Basel, Switzerland.
Caivano, O., Leduc, K., & Talwar, V. (2018, November). Elementary and high school children’s cyberbullying experiences: Does setting online rules make parents more aware? Association for Moral Education Annual Conference, Barcelona, Spain.