Jaffe-Dax Lab
Our Projects
projects of students in our laboratory
Tal Ravid-Roth
I'm a Ph.D. student on the direct Ph.D. track, in a collaboration between the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University. I'm specializing in developmental psychology, specifically motor development in infancy. My research examines the early-life development of the reward system and its connection to the motor system.
I hold a B.A. in psychology (Summa cum Laude) from The Open University.
Apart from my academic pursuits, I'm proud to be Alon's wife and Shay and Adi's mom.
Our experiment tracks the eye movements of infants while they observe various videos. The aim of this study is to delve into the realm of early motor development in infants and gain insights into their motor learning processes.
The significance of this experiment is paramount to our understanding of the foundational aspects of human motor development. By dissecting the intricate mechanisms responsible for the reinforcement and attenuation of motor pathways based on sensory predictions and their corresponding outcomes, we aim to shed light on a fundamental question: How do infants acquire motor skills and adjust their actions in response to feedback?
This exploration can provide us with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying the construction of motor skills in infants and the adaptive processes they employ. This, in turn, contributes to a more comprehensive comprehension of the core developmental processes that underpin early human growth.
By investigating how infants learn and refine motor behaviors through reinforcement mechanisms, we can gain insights into the dynamic interplay between sensory predictions, motor pathways, and the outcomes of learning processes. By deciphering the intricate dance between prediction and actual motor outcomes, we aspire to advance our knowledge of motor learning during infancy.
Cachal Neuburger
My research investigates the early foundations of human learning, with a focus on how predictive processes and sensory preferences emerge in infancy. I pursue two primary lines of inquiry: 1) How does prediction, a fundamental component of learning, develop and what cortical patterns enable this process, and 2) What spontaneous sensory preferences scaffold early learning?
In one stream of work, I examine the development of regularity learning, the ability to detect patterns and regularities in the environment. This capacity, which emerges early in life, supports key aspects of human cognition, including language acquisition and higher-order reasoning. Within this framework, I focus on prediction as a central mechanism. Prediction involves both enhanced brain responses to unexpected events and coordinated activity between frontal and posterior regions when stimuli are predictable. My work asks whether these neural signatures are causally related, and how they differ from other developing domains such as sensory processing and motor control. By leveraging the heightened plasticity of the infant brain, I aim to map the developmental trajectory and functional distinctiveness of these processes.
A second line of research explores how spontaneous sensory preferences, particularly in the visual domain, contribute to early learning. Although the visual system matures relatively slowly, infants demonstrate early sensitivity to visual input and show surprise when visual information does not align with other sensory cues. My studies investigate whether infants display consistent preferences for visual features, such as motion speed, color saturation, or image clarity, across early development, and whether these preferences can serve as intrinsic motivators that facilitate learning. Through this work, I aim to identify how early perceptual biases interact with attentional and learning mechanisms during infancy.
Collectively, these studies advance our understanding of how early predictive and perceptual processes build the foundations for human learning.
Sivan Flomen
I am currently an M.Sc. student in Neuroscience at the Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University. I hold a B.P.T. (Bachelor of Physical Therapy) from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva.
My research focuses on how infants learn to recognize familiar faces, under the joint supervision of Dr. Sagi Jaffe-Dax (Cognitive Development Lab) and Prof. Galit Yovel (Face Recognition Lab) at Tel Aviv University.
Our study investigates when and how infants begin to recognize familiar faces, focusing on the visual features most critical for face recognition. Using eye-tracking methods, we measure infants’ looking behavior as they view faces that differ in critical versus non-critical features, those that are more or less important for distinguishing individual identities.
Through this work, we aim to uncover the developmental origins of face recognition and understand how early perceptual learning supports the ability to identify and remember people. Insights from this research contribute to a broader understanding of social cognition and perceptual learning in infancy.
Carmel Moalem
My research focuses on how the brain develops in two main areas: social synchrony and cortical adaptation. I study how children and adults coordinate their gaze and brain activity during social interactions, using noninvasive brain imaging (fNIRS) and mobile eye tracking. I also examine how the brain adapts to repeated experiences across development, using both fNIRS and intracranial recordings (sEEG).
Daniel Ozery
I am a direct-track M.A. student in psychology in the research track at Tel Aviv University. My research focuses on real-world attentional biases and their impact on pre-reading abilities in toddlers. I study how children in the pre-reading age scan their environment and the actions of the adults around them during a shared reading activity, using mobile eye-tracking.
Manar Khalaila
My research investigates the early development of social cognition, with a particular focus on how children develop stereotypes, and come to understand social hierarchies within multicultural contexts. I examine how children perceive and respond to ingroup and outgroup members, and how these processes are shaped by early social experiences. Using a combination of eye-tracking during child-adapted tasks inspired by the Implicit Association Test (IAT), behavioral experiments, and fNIRS, I study both behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying social cognition. In addition, I use inter-subject correlation (ISC) to explore how children’s brains synchronize during naturalistic social processing, and how this varies within and between cultural groups. Overall, This study aims at identifying how social biases and group-related representations emerge in the brain and behavior from an early age, and how these processes develop across childhood.
