I’m a senior lecturer in cognitive and neuropsychology and PI of the Perception, Cognition, and Language Research Group at the Unit of Psychology, University of Oulu, Finland.
My main research interests are language comprehension and visual cognition. In particular, I’m interested in how people can understand each other with relatively good accuracy, even though they don’t always say what they mean (e.g., when using figurative language); and the reasons why they sometimes fail in the comprehension process. I investigate these questions primarily using eye-tracking and combining eye-tracking with other laboratory measures.
Recent articles
Olkoniemi, H., Häikiö, T., Laine, M., & Pexman, P.M. (2026). Who gets it? Explaining variability in children’s written irony comprehension. Journal of Child Language, 1-24.
Loukola, V., Tuominen, J., Malinen, E., Välimaa, K., Olkoniemi, H., Revonsuo, A., & Valli, K. (2026). Individual and situational factors predicting threatening events and pandemic-related threatening events in dreams during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Sleep Research, e70336.
Olkoniemi, H., & Pexman, P. M. (2026). Training studies provide new insights about mechanisms of irony development. Pragmatics & Cognition, 33, 56-74.
Olkoniemi, H., Häikiö, T., Merinen, M., Manninen, J., Laine, M., & Pexman, P.M. (2026). Learning irony in school: Effects of metapragmatic training. Journal of Child Language, 53, 633-654.