I am a Research Associate at the University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology (Cognitive). I currently work with James T. Enns, Daniela Palombo, Connor Kerns, and Tim Oberlander.
I completed my PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Ran R. Hassin and Daphna Shohamy (Columbia U). Before that, I studied psychology at the Moscow State University.
My research focuses on social cognition, i.e. the cognitive processes that support our ability to communicate with each other and work together to bring about change in the world. My hope is to bridge the gap between the current elaborate understanding of cognition and somewhat oversimplified concept of “social cognition”. To achieve this, I employ ecologically valid designs and novel technology, test diverse populations of participants, and apply computational modelling to the data.
Research Overview
Make It Real: Ecological Approach
It is plausible that social processes, like most cognitive processes, are situationally specific. That means it is a mistake to apply the same label — social cognition — every time a task involves interaction with other people. A number of accounts suggest that social cognition is built out of several sub-processes, yet how to delineate these sub-processes is still an open question. It is then plausible to suggest that the sub-processes, if they exist, will be affected by different circumstances not to the same extent. My aim is to identify the distinguishable sub-processes involved in social cognition by testing different aspects of it (a) in different people, (b) in different situations – e.g., situations of social stress, (c) in ecological settings, and (d) utilizing novel technologies.
Social Cognition on the Spectrum: Individual Differences
Autism spectrum disorder is famously characterized by distorted social abilities. Yet not all social abilities are affected, and not all affected social abilities are decreased. I use interactive ecologically valid paradigms to test different aspects of social cognition in children and adults with autism, to inform delineation of the building blocks of social cognition.
Situational Differences in Social Cognition
The other classical way to test restrictions of a cognitive process – and thus test whether different aspects of social cognition have different restrictions – is to create circumstances that could either challenge or enhance the process.
For more information, see:
One challenge with social cognition is its ecological demands: to examine a social process we need to create a situation that gives rise to its adequate representative. On the bright side, it is really not hard to find situations where a social process comes to the fore (e.g., the recent pandemic provided an interesting case for changes – and lack of such – in face perception). And there are multitudes of ways to create interactive social context at a lab.
Novel Technologies
For more information, see:
There is a special place in my heart for novel methods. The technological breakthrough of this decade is wearable body sensors. The promise is that wearable devices like smart watches will soon monitor our bodily states, providing data to improve our wellbeing and to predict illnesses that may be caused by destructive behavioral patterns. Wearable sensor technology is especially tempting for research involving clinical populations (e.g., ASD) as it promises near-continuous and passive measurement of psychologically relevant biometrics. But this is not yet a plug and play matter. Physiological data is complex and continuous real-life measurement is difficult. With systematic approach though one can achieve remarkable results and gain insights into experiences that cannot be captured in a lab study.
For more information, see:
Boerner, K.E., Dudarev, V., Pearl-Dowler, L., Wharton, M.N., Siden, H., Holsti, L., Oberlander, T.F. (in press). The Living Lab at Home: Feasibility and acceptability of multimodal in-home data collection among youth across the developmental spectrum. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.