A graduate student in the Clinical Child and Educational Psychology Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A recipient of the prestigious Berthold Simonsohn Scholarship Fund. My master's thesis explores the double empathy problem and the role of alexithymia—the difficulty in identifying and describing one's own emotions—in understanding why neurotypical individuals struggle to interpret emotions in autistic people. Through my research, I investigate whether higher levels of alexithymia in autistic individuals affect the empathic accuracy of neurotypical observers toward them.

Noa Feldman is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Educational and Clinical Psychology of the Child at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She previously completed a preparatory program in Psychology at the Hebrew University and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Mathematics from the Open University of Israel.

Her thesis investigates the empathic abilities of autistic individuals through the lens of the Double Empathy Problem, using the Empathic Accuracy Paradigm to explore mutual social misattunement between autistic and neurotypical individuals.

Benjamin Fain is a master's degree student in special education. He is a trumpeter and pianist, a youth orchestra conductor, and a music teacher working in the field of special education. He is a graduate of Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Academy of Music. His thesis focuses on the empathy of people participating in inclusive musical settings – frameworks in which people with and without disabilities work together. The research examines the contribution of musical activity, alongside the impact of social interaction with people with disabilities, on the empathy levels of participants without disabilities. The research findings are expected to contribute to a deeper understanding of mixed-neurotype interactions, empathy, and inclusion, as well as the role of music in these areas.

Ofri Reichmann holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Educational and Clinical Psychology at the same institution. Her research explores the role of sibling relationships in the social development of children with autism, with a particular focus on discrepancies between parental reports and clinical assessments. She is a recipient of the Berthold Simonsohn Scholarship.

Hila is an MA student in the Educational and Child Clinical Psychology program, HUJI, School of Education. Her research focuses on sibling relationships within families with diverse neurological profiles. Specifically, she examines how sibling dynamics vary among three types of families: those with two neurotypical young children, those with two autistic children, and those with one neurotypical and one autistic child (Mixed-Neurotype sibling dyads). This study will shed light on sibling relationships in families raising two autistic children, an understudied group, despite the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses. Hila is the recipient of the "Rita Gold Fund for Early Childhood Education" scholarship for her thesis.

 

Ofir Alfi, is an MA student in the Educational and Clinical Child Psychology program. In the MixSI lab, Ofir is coordinating the development of the Empathic Accuracy paradigm for children (Children’s HEARTS – [Children-Hebrew-Empathic-Accuracy-Research-Tools] project). Her thesis research explores parents’ empathic accuracy towards their children — parents’ ability to accurately identify their children’s emotions. She specifically examines how autistic traits in both parents and children, as well as the similarity of these traits between them, is related to this ability. Her research is supported by a scholarship from the Child and Youth Rights Program at the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University.

 

I am a PhD student in the School of Education and currently serve as a representative of the Special Education Supervision Division in statutory committees within the Ministry of Education. My M.A. thesis focused on gender-related differences in executive functioning among autistic boys and girls. My doctoral research is conducted in the Mixed Social Interactions Lab and the ADHD Decision-Making Lab, where I study neurodevelopmental diversity. I explore cognitive patterns of inter- and intra-individual variability in autism and ADHD, aiming to refine our understanding of neurodevelopmental profiles as dynamic patterns rather than fixed categories, seeking to integrate experimental methods with real-world relevance.