Dr. Frenkel Tahli
Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology
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As a scientist-practitioner, I am committed to fostering a productive dialogue between research, practice, and policy, promoting the dissemination of knowledge across both professional and public spheres. My research explores how early parental environments shape children’s emotional, social, and neural development, aiming to identify risk and resilience factors that inform policy and therapeutic interventions. In this capacity, I conduct longitudinal studies tracking families from infancy, examine perinatal risk factors, and lead clinical trials to assess the effectiveness and mechanisms of change in interventions involving parents, infants, and young children. Since the outbreak of the "Iron Swords" war, I lead clinical research at the “Medabrim-Beyahad” organization ("Talking Together – Parents and Children"), which provides trauma-focused dyadic therapy to young children and their parents affected by the conflict.
My work employs a translational approach, bridging empirical findings with practical applications to enhance therapeutic outcomes. Clinical experience grounds my research questions, while empirical findings from my work guide the development of preventive policies and intervention programs in perinatal care and early childhood development. My translational approach aims to identify factors that moderate risk and foster resilience within early caregiving, guiding the design of clinical interventions and policy initiatives for early parenting, childcare, preventive screening, and perinatal care.
I received my doctorate in child clinical psychology from Tel Aviv University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland, where I trained in a leading child development research lab. Between 2015 and 2022, I directed the Research Unit of the Ziama Arkin Infancy Institute, and I currently head the Parent Child Development Lab at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology.
In my lectures, I integrate developmental psychology with clinical applications, emphasizing a developmental perspective on psychopathology. In my clinical practice, I specialize in therapeutic work with children, adolescents, and their parents, as well as dyadic therapy, parent guidance, and the treatment of young adults.
ONGOING AND COMPLETED STUDIES:
1) How early caregiving shapes the development of the infant brain for social behavior:
Abundant research has established the detrimental impacts of early environmental neglect and deprivation on infant brain and behavior. This is one of the first studies to directly delineate the impact of healthy caregiving on infants' brain development over the first two years of life, and examine the role of the infant brain in supporting the emergence of empathic and pro-social behavior.
The study has two main objectives:
First, we follow mother-infant dyads over the first two years of life and examine whether infants' early social experiences with their mother are predictive of infants' brain development and emerging empathy and pro-sociality. Results reveal the significant impact that very early maternal responsiveness has on shaping infants' brain development, neural organization and regulatory function to support their emerging social capacities.
Second, we examine infant's real-time event-related electrical brain activity recorded during experimentally manipulated mother-infant interactions to delineate the precise impact that particular maternal caregiving behaviors have on infants' real-time brain activity. This is the first study to employ on-line recording of infant EEG collected while the infant is experiencing experimentally manipulated maternal behaviors. Results will shed light on the impact of nuances in healthy maternal caregiving in shaping infant brain activity and "programming" the infant social-brain.
2) Post-Traumatic Stress Following Childbirth
My research indicates that maternal symptoms of PTS-FC may form substantial risk for difficulties in the emerging mother-infant relationship and associated infant-outcomes.
Abundant research reveals remarkable impact of maternal mental health in shaping both maternal and infant behavior within dyadic interactions While decades of research have focused on the study of postpartum depression thereby establishing clear guidelines for diagnosis and treatment, PTS-FC has received significantly less empirical attention. Recent literature identifies childbirth as a potentially traumatic event, following which mothers may develop symptoms of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Following-Childbirth (PTS-FC). Data suggest that 19-45% of all births are described by mothers as traumatic, eliciting subjective experiences of threat for physical integrity of the self and/or newborn. Approximately 25% of women develop symptoms of post-traumatic-stress-following-childbirth (PTS-FC), and 4-15% culminate into full post-traumatic-stress-disorder (in normative and high-risk populations respectively). Research on PTS-FC is critical for formulating theoretical frameworks, to guide preventive policy pertaining to perinatal care, and treatment targets.
My research on PTS-FC focuses on 3 domains:
First, Development of simple and cost-effective predictive screening tools -for use both prenatally and during the postnatal hospital stay.
Second, Development and testing of childbirth-related interventions administered by medical staff to prevent PTS-FC. In collaboration with medical staff from Sheba hospital, we developed and tested a novel “biofeedback” intervention utilizing the Ultrasound in the delivery room. Our study was featured in leading Medical journals and conferences and has elicited further investigation of this intervention by several research groups across the world.
Third, We assess PTS-FC symptoms in a normative general population sample of women, and examine whether symptoms of PTS-FC during the early postpartum period impose risk for mother, infant, and the emerging relationship between the two.
3) Intervention Research
This domain of research aims to identify preventive strategies which ameliorate risk for postnatal symptomology and associated detrimental impact on infant development. My research focuses on measurement of treatment outcomes and delineating mechanisms of change which underlie intervention efficacy. I employ a Theory-of-Change (TOC) framework which allows for nuanced identification of “mechanisms of change” (i.e. mechanisms which underlie intervention-related change). Delineating specific mechanisms of change are critical for refinement of the theoretical model (TOC) and treatment design.
4) Fostering resilience during infancy and early childhood – laying foundations for future adjustment to environmental stress
Decades of developmental science have established infancy as an early sensitive time window which lays the foundations for future child adjustment and regulation of stress.
When faced with inevitable large-scale stressors, most children, including normative otherwise “healthy” developing children, experience some extent of adjustment difficulties. Critically however, some children go on to display persistent maladjustment, whereas others eventually recover. To date, little is known about why some children better adjust than others. We propose that normative variations in early infant caregiving as well as early infant temperamental dispositions, may critically shape children’s differential patterns of future adjustment to large-scale stressors. Studies on child adjustment to large-scale-stressors rarely have access to pre-stressor data, and no study examined pre-stressor data collected during the sensitive time window of infancy. We utilize an existing cohort whom we previously assessed in infancy, and recently re-assessed during nationwide lockdown to delineate preschool children’s behavioral and biological adjustment following a large-scale stressor (COVID-19).
This study directly investigates the ways in which optimal infant caregiving, provided in normative healthy populations might crucially foster the building of child resilience to future environmental stressors. Our objectives are to (1) identify early mechanisms of risk and resilience that operate prior to stressor onset, and as early as infancy, to foster optimal child adjustment following exposure to a stressor; (2) identify caregiver mechanisms that operate in real-time, during stressor onset to foster optimal child adjustment; (3) assess the extent to which early pre-stressor mechanisms of risk and resilience, interact with later real-time caregiving mechanisms, to shape children’s pattern of adjustment.
4) The role of parental executive functioning (EF) in supporting sensitive caregiving during Infancy
Adaptive child development generally occurs in the context of well-regulated parenting environments. Parents’ cognitive executive functioning (EF) skills have been hypothesized to be a major determinant of well-regulated parenting environments during childhood. Specifically, parents’ inhibitory control (IC) is suggested to play a key role in problem-solving, overriding impulses, and parent’s ability to make pro-active decisions based on goals rather than habits or reactions.
Decades of developmental science have established infancy as an early sensitive time window during caregiving lays the foundations for future social and emotional development. Nonetheless, the role of IC in shaping the quality of parenting during infancy remains unclear – partly due to methodological lack of ecologically valid measures.
In the present study we developed novel IC computer tasks which are specifically designated to assess parental-IC across various infant-related emotional contexts. We further observe parent behavior assessed across various caregiving contexts designed to elicit a wide range of emotional demands from both parent and infant.
Results reveal significant contextual effects interfering with parent performance on the IC task. Results further indicate differential links between parent IC and parenting behavior across caregiving contexts. Findings underscore the need for ecologically valid measures and suggest that IC in the context of negative infant emotion may be a unique predictor of parenting stress and parenting behavior within emotionally charged caregiving situations. We are happy to share the tasks being developed and validated in my lab with additional developmental research laboratories to further shed light on the mechanistic role that parent IC has in determining parenting behavior during infancy.