Members
Lab Director
Rama Novogrodsky
My clinical experience as a Communication Disorder Clinician (Speech and Language therapist) working with different populations that present atypical language acquisition and my linguistic and cognitive psychology background guide the theoretical and clinical questions of my research.
I study the interaction between language development and cognitive development and how different components of language (such as syntax, semantics, phonology and pragmatics) disassociate and interact. The studies include diverse populations: typically developing children, children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)/ (DLD), children with autism, children with hearing impairment and deaf children who use sign language.
Research Fellow
Hila Gendler-Shalev
My research area is child language development. My academic goals are having a better understanding of typical and atypical language acquisition processes, developing efficient tools for language development screening, grasping the environmental effects on language development, and optimizing the language learning conditions for children from various backgrounds. My doctoral thesis explored early lexical development characteristics of typically developing Hebrew-speaking toddlers. My study was based on a large national sample, forming early lexical development norms in Hebrew. Currently, my studies explore early vocabulary acquisition of deaf children who sign and speak (bilingual bimodal children), early vocabulary characteristics of toddlers with atypical language acquisition (e.g., children with autism, children with DLD) and the effects of social distancing (due to Covid- 19) on early lexical development and child well-being. I am also working on developing efficient language assessment tools in Hebrew and Israeli Sign Language.
A link of the ongoing research https://www.firstwords.co.il/
PhD Students
Erika Antebi
My research supervised by Dr. Rama Novogrodsky and Dr. Avivit Ben-David, will explore the phonological acquisition of Hebrew speaking toddlers. I will develop a Word Complexity Measure (WCM, Stoel-Gammon, 2010) for Hebrew-speaking children in their early years of phonological acquisition. The WCM is an independent measure reflecting the phonological complexity of the child's production. It focuses exclusively on the complexity of the child's speech, beyond accuracy or intelligibility. Furthermore, my research will explore how the WCM distinguishes between Hebrew-speaking children with Speech Sound Disorders versus typically developing children.
Inbal Eilon
My research focuses on the acquisition of Mental State Verbs in children with Autism. MSV are used to represent internal processes like desires, beliefs and thoughts (e.g., 'want', 'think', 'know'), and are one of the language instruments used to describe the person's knowledge and thoughts about the internal world of him/her and others. MSV appear in the language of typically developing children toward the end of the second year of life and continues to develop during childhood. The aim of my study is to explore the acquisition of MSV in children with Autism compared to typically developing children, to test the influence of different contexts on production and comprehension of MSV (e.g., spontaneous speech, narrative and sentence completing) and to examine the connection between MSV acquisition and the development of theory of mind.
Sabrin Shaban-Rabah
I am a speech and language therapist. I completed my BA and MA studies at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa. My PhD research supervised by Dr. Rama Novogrodsky and Dr. Rose Stamp focuses on “Multilingualism and deafness: Evidence for typical and atypical language acquisition". The proposed research will explore language interaction and atypical language in the domains of morpho-syntax and lexical-semantics in bilingual bimodal deaf signing students who communicate in Israeli Sign Language and Arabic.
Nardeen Maalouf-Zraik
I hold a master’s degree in communication sciences and disorders from the University of Haifa. I currently work as a regional speech- language therapist and an audiologist at the Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the North District of Israel and at the Developmental Center at Maccabi Health Services. My master’s thesis investigated the impact of diglossia on narrative abilities of school-aged Arabic-speaking children with hearing impairments (Novogrodsky, Maalouf-Zraik, & Meir, 2022). In my PhD research, supervised by Professor Rama Novogrodsky and Dr. Limor Adi-Bensaid, I will explore the development of phonology of Arabic-speaking children with hearing impairments as a case of acquisition in a diglossic context.
MA Students
Yarden Wainer
I have completed my B.A. degree in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa. Currently, I work as a speech and language therapist in educational facilities for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) under the age of six. I am a team member of a research group that examines the acquisition process of mental state verbs in children with ASD. My MA research focuses on the acquisition of factive verbs in children with ASD compared to typically developing children.
Israa Jammal
I completed my BA studies at the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in Tel-Aviv University. As a speech and language therapist I work with children with Autism. In my thesis, completed at Haifa University, I examined the developmental process of mental state verbs (e.g., know, want, think) among Palestinian Arabic speaking children with autism. Specifically, the research examined the quantity and types of mental state verbs that children with autism (ages 1;05- 10;00 years) use and compared them with typically developing peers.
Rotem Hagay
I have completed my B.A degree in Communication Disorders at Hadassa Academic College in Jerusalem. Currently I am working with hearing impaired adults and children as an audiologist. My MA research will investigate the factors that influence listening comprehension ability of elementary school aged children with cochlear implants. The study will examine cognitive, language and speech perception abilities in the transplanted children compared to their normal hearing peers.
Hadar Gil
I have completed my B.A. degree in the Department of Communication Disorders at Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem. I work as a speech and language therapist with children with developmental disorders at a child developmental institute and at educational facilities. In addition, I work as an audiologist with children and adults. My M.A. research project investigates the characteristics of early lexicon of children with developmental language disorder (DLD).
Dana Mansour
I have completed my B.A. degree in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa. Currently, I work as a speech and language therapist with Autism under the age of six. My MA research will, supervised by Prof. Karen Banai and Prof. Rama Novogrodsky, investigates the factors that influence listening comprehension ability among deaf and hard of hearing school-age children who speak Palestinian Arabic. The study will examine cognitive, language and speech perception abilities of deaf and hard of hearing children compared to their normal hearing peers.
Muna Egbaria
I am a speech and language therapist working with children with a variety of speech and language disorders. I completed my BA studies at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Tel-Aviv University. Currently, I am completing my MA studies at Haifa University. My MA research will examine the spoken language of deaf and hard-of-hearing (signers and non-signers), Palestinian Arabic speaking preschoolers. I will compare their language to that of typically developing peers.
Alumni
Natalia Meir (Post Doc)
Dr. Natalia Meir (https://english.biu.ac.il/faculty/meir-natalia) joined the the lab as a post-doc in 2017-2018 on a project funded by the University of Haifa “Linguistic abilities of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), children with High Functioning Autism (ASD), and children with Hearing Impairment (HI): a comparative study”. She was involved in ongoing lab projects. Several papers on morpho-syntactic abilities of children with Hearing Impairment and Autism Spectrum disorder were published: Novogrodsky, R., Meir, N., &Michael, R. (2018). Morpho-syntactic abilities of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired toddlers: evidence from a sentence repetition task; Novogrodsky. R. & Meir, N. (2020). Multilingual Children with Special Needs in Early Education; Novogrodsky, R. & Meir. N. (2020). Age, Frequency and Iconicity in early sign language acquisition: Evidence from the Israeli Sign language Communicative Inventory (ISL-CDI).
Furthermore, during Dr. Meir's post-doc the collaboration on language skills of monolingual and bilingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorder started which resulted in several publications: Meir, N. & Novogrodsky. R. (2019). Prerequisites of pronoun use in monolingual and bilingual children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and typical language development; Meir, N. & Novogrodsky. R. (2020). Syntactic abilities and verbal memory in monolingual and bilingual children with High Functioning Autism (HFA); Meir, N. & Novogrodsky, R. (2021). Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Hope Morgan (Post Doc)
2018-2019
Dana Brants Yosefy (MA)
Research report completed 2023.
I have completed my B.A. degree in the Department of Communication Disorders at Tel-Aviv University. I work as an independent speech and language therapist with children with a variety of speech and language disorders. I have completed my MA research report supervised by Prof. Rama Novogrodsky and Prof. Natalia Meir, at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa. I explored code-switching patterns in 10 autistic and 10 non-autistic Russian-Hebrew-speaking children, while conversing with either a bilingual or a monolingual experimenter.
Duaa Haj Dawood (MA)
Thesis completed 2023.
I am a BA graduate in Education of Deaf and Hard of Hearing children from Tel-Aviv University. Also, I received a Diploma in interpreting Israeli Sign Language at Bar-Ilan University. My MA research was supervised by Dr. Rama Novogrodsky and Dr. Rose Stamp at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Haifa. I explored the mutual influence of the interaction between Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Kufr Qassem Sign Language (KQSL) during a naturalistic conversation between bilingual deaf people from Kufr Qassem. The study examined the effects of the interlocutor condition and the conversation topic on language preference, code-switching and reiteration, a unique type of code-switching, which is common in sign languages but largely under-researched.
Hanan Natur (MA)
Thesis completed 2023.
I am a speech and language therapist. My MA research examined the lexical characteristics of children with autism at the early stage of language acquisition based on parents’ reports on the Hebrew MB- CDI questionnaire. The study examined the effect of word concreteness, phonological complexity, and lexical category (nouns and verbs) on expressive and receptive vocabulary of Hebrew-speaking toddlers with autism.
Aumia Abu Jabl (MA)
Thesis completed 2021.
I am a speech and language therapist. My research examined the production of Free and bound Pronouns by Arabic speaking children with autism spectrum disorder in two tasks: narrative and sentence completion. The study questioned if the deficit in pronouns production is attributed to a deficit in Theory of Mind or to deficit in syntax, focusing on specific characteristic of Arabic grammar, which allows using free and bound pronouns.
Nardeen Maalouf (MA)
Thesis completed 2018.
I am an MA graduate of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. I work as a regional speech and language therapist and an audiologist in the educational center for the deaf and hard of hearing, North District and in the developmental center in Maccabi health services.
My MA research, supervised by Dr. Rama Novogrodsky and the late Prof Irit Meir examined the impact of diglossia on story characteristics of school-age Arabic speakers with hearing-impairment. The study examined narrative abilities in Colloquial-Arabic and Standard-Arabic of school-age Arabic speaking children with hearing-impairment compared with their hearing peers (see, Novogrodsky, Maalouf-Zraik, & Meir, 2022).
Ora Ohanin (Research Assistant)
I am deaf, a daughter of deaf parents, and Israeli Sign Language (ISL) is my mother tongue language. Hebrew is my second language, American Sign Language is my third language and yes, English is my fourth language. I graduated the Technion majoring in interactive media design, with a BA degree from the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at the University of Haifa. My true love for the study of sign languages began since I had the privilege of working as a research assistant in the BIBI project (2016 - 2020). I began to understand that I was diving deep into a fascinating world that actually belongs to me, to my deaf identity and to my deaf culture. Today I teach the topic "variation and language change of ISL" in the program of ISL Translation Studies at Bar Ilan University, and I work at a Virtual Sign Language company, that develops an algorithm for translating English into American Sign Language.
Adi Steg (MA)
Thesis completed December 2019.
I am an MA graduate of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. I work as an audiologist and clinical research coordinator at Sonova Israel. My MA examined the effect of native sign language (Israeli Sign Language- ISL) on spoken language abilities and symbolic play skills of toddlers with severe-profound hearing loss.
Yael Ciffer (MA)
Thesis completed September 2022.
Liron Rosen (MA)
Thesis completed September 2022.
Shira Uliner (MA)
Final MA report November 2021.
Revital Bazes (MA)
Thesis completed November 2020.
Or Rozen (MA)
Thesis completed July 2020.
Adi Steg (MA)
Thesis completed December 2019.
Mona Anraws (MA)
Thesis completed December 2019.
Sabrin Shaban- Rabah (MA)
Thesis completed November 2019.
Lara Barak (MA)
Thesis completed June 2019.
Ghadeer Salamy (MA)
Final MA report completed 2019.
Hadar Hazut (MA)
Final MA report completed December 2018.
Heba Daoud (MA)
Thesis completed October 2017.
Maria Khoury (MA)
Thesis completed September 2017.
Rachel Michael (MA)
Thesis completed August 2017.