PEOPLE
I completed my BA in psychology and education at Tel-Aviv University, and my MA and Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Toronto. I’ve been a faculty member at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare since 2007, and am currently serving as head of the Doctoral Program at the school.
My research focuses on parent-child relationships and children’s socio-emotional development. For more information regarding research interests, projects, and publications please check out the rest of this website.
Prof. Maayan Davidov, Ph.D
Yael Paz, Ph.D
I've completed my Ph.D. in the lab in September 2020. My undergraduate studies in Psychobiology and MA in Child Clinical and Educational Psychology were both also completed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am extremely interested in developmental psychopathology, and in what we can learn from normative development about abnormal development. My Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the developmental consequences of early individual differences in empathy among typically developing and high-risk infants. I studied the links between empathic abilities in the first year of life and several developmental outcomes during the second and third years: prosocial behavior, externalizing, and the risk of being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. My study was partly supported by the Baroness Ariane de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program Scholarship. In addition to research, I'm also doing my practical internship as a developmental psychologist.
Maia Ram Berger
I'm a doctoral student at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My Ph.D. dissertation focuses on three distinct aspects of parenting during infancy: responsiveness to distress, and two forms of responsiveness to non-distress - following the child's lead and shared positive affect. I will examine the links between these three aspects of parenting (coded from mother-infant interactions) and different types of adjustment difficulties in early childhood - externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, sleep difficulties, and feeding problems.
Adel Zeevi-Cousin
I am a Ph.D. student and clinical social worker (MSW).
My research interests are parent-child relationships, and particularly parental control, the personal domain, differentiation of the self, and cultural influences on parenting and child development. A cultural aspect which I am focusing on is religious conservatism. My fascination with these topics comes from the field - I provide counseling to parents and children, many of whom come from an ultra-orthodox background.
Tal Orlitsky, Ph.D
I've completed my Ph.D. in the lab in 2022. I study how different types of responsive parenting relate to the development of various forms of empathy at the very beginning of life. Another area of interest is how diverse types of maternal mental health difficulties predict early empathic concern, empathic happiness, and cognitive empathy. I am also interested in how different aspects of parental discourse with the child predict cognitive empathy and empathic concern. During my doctoral studies I was a grateful recipient of a Scholion-Scholarship, and a member of “In Someone Else's Shoes”, an interdisciplinary research group that studied empathy in history, society, and culture.
Shira Goldberg, Ph.D
Shira Goldberg was a post-doctoral fellow in the lab during 2019-2020. She has a BA in linguistics and school counseling, an MA in school counseling, and a PhD in education from Tel Aviv University. Her major research interests are processes of parental and educational socialization, psychological adjustment and maladjustment, and engagement in risky and problematic behaviors.
Ofri Krauss-Arad
I am a Ph.D. student, a clinical social worker (MSW) and a students' instructor in the field. I have completed both my B.A and MSW studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
As part of my practice I work with children and parents at high-risk who have experienced traumatic life events. Interacting with these families has motivated me to study relevant processes. In particular, my research interest lies in uncovering the distinct consequences of different types of traumatic life events during childhood (such as abuse vs. neglect). I am studying the differential consequences of these early experiences on how individuals perceive themselves and their close relationships in adulthood, and especially in parent-child relationships.