Principal Investigator: Florina Uzefovsky, PhD
Lab alumni
Michal Ron, MA in Developmental psychology
My research focused on risk factors for Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). Specifically, the role of prenatal risk factors, such as maternal medical conditions and obstetric complications, and perinatal risk factors, such as pre-term labor and infant characteristics in predicting autism diagnosis in the offspring. The data for this project has been collected by the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.
I currently continue to work at the Bio-Empathy lab as part of the research project focusing on puberty in autism. Additionally, I will soon begin my developmental psychology internship.
Ornit Freudenstein, PhD
I am a certified developmental psychologist, working in the field of autism spectrum conditions.
My research focused on an important period of development - puberty, in youths diagnosed with autism, with a particular interest in understanding the association between circulating sex-hormones and autism symptomology and social cognition.
Adi Tomer, MA in developmental psychology
My thesis was part of a larger study examining the development of empathy in children at risk, compared to children from normative families. My thesis focused on emotional and cognitive empathy in the typical low-risk population, and how this is related to children's salivary cortisol levels.
Sapir Saad, MA in clinical psychology
My thesis examined the relationship between empathy and behavioral problems, and how this relationship is moderated by parental psychopathologies. My thesis was part of a larger study one the environmental factors associated with children's empathy. I found that higher levels of cognitive empathy were associated with more externalizing problems when the parents’ psychopathology level was high, and to less externalizing problems when the parents’ psychopathology level was low. Thus strengthening the notion that empathy can serve as a risky strength in difficult environments.
Dan Aizenberg, MSc in biology
My MSc thesis focused on exploring the heterogeneous nature of autism. I am using informatics to investigate the differences in phenotypes of individuals who received an early versus late diagnosis of autism. My research is conducted in collaboration with Dr. Alal Eran from the Biology department.
Moran Mandel, MA in clinical psychology
I am interested in parental emotional language, and how it affects the child's emotional development and behavior. My thesis, which was part of a larger study, examined the relationship between parental use of emotional language before the COVID-19 pandemic and children's behavior problems during the first wave of the pandemic. I found that a higher rate of parent's emotional talk during a storytelling task before the Covid-19 outbreak significantly predicted a smaller increase in the overall child's behavior problems during the first wave of Covid-19.
Maya Zach, MA in developmental psychology
My thesis examined the relationship between children's responses to negative (distress) and positive (joy) emotions displayed by others. I found that 2-5 year olds' cognitive empathy responses to the two emotions are similar, but not the emotional empathy responses.
Gal Shklarzevsky, MA in clinical psychology
My thesis examined the relationship between gender identity, sexual orientation and empathy. Specifically, I aimed to disentangle the relationship between empathy and sex, gender roles, and sexual orientation.
Yael Amit, MA in neuroscience
My research focuses on the fascinating relationship between memory and empathy. I am interested in understanding the way empathic experience affects the processes underlying encoding and remembering the experience. The study also examines the way the perception of the other and the self influences both the empathic response and how we remember the experience.
Etgar Tassa, MA in clinical psychology
My research focuses on the fascinating relationship between memory and empathy. I am interested in understanding the way empathic experience affects the processes underlying encoding and remembering the experience. The study also examines the way the perception of the other and the self influences both the empathic response and how we remember the experience.
Nufar Zioni, MA in developmental psychology
I am interested in the link between parents' ability to control their emotions (self-regulate) and child's empathy, and how it is affected by stressful events. In particular, my thesis, which is a part of the Bio-CEED study, examines how mothers' responsiveness to distress relates to children's cognitive empathy development.
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Adi Meidan, PhD
My PhD thesis focused on investigating how child maltreatment affects the development of empathy and behavior problems, how these links are associated with parental empathy and how they change over time. I am also investigating the biological mechanisms that are at the basis of these processes.
I am a certified clinical psychologist and during 2013-2017 I was an intern at the "Abarbanel Mental Health Center", as a part of my clinical training. In the future, I hope to combine clinical practice with academic research.
I received support for the PhD from the School for Cognitive Sciences.
My thesis, which is a part of a larger study, examines the relationship between empathic reactions to positive and negative emotions, and how these relate differentially to temperament in 10-18 months old infants.
I am interested in the relationship between empathic disequilibrium and depression, especially if this relationship differs between women and men. My thesis examines these relationships using a meta-analysis of seven independent samples, all collected as part of other studies in the lab.
My PhD thesis aims to investigate empathy in adolescents with and without autism. Additionally, I am interested in the role that sex hormones (e.g., testosterone) and social hormones (e.g., oxytocin and vasopressin) play in different types of empathy in adolescents with and without autism. More information about this research project can be found here.
My masters thesis was also conducted at the Bio-Empathy lab. It focused on the role of hormonal imbalance, and in particular, sex-hormone imbalance, in increasing risk for autism spectrum conditions in women. To better understand the role of hormones in predicting an autism diagnosis in women I am utilizing a large data set that was collected by the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.
I received support for my PhD from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Offer Prize for research in adolescence.