Dr. Lior Abramson Vaisman

Dr. Abramson-Vaisman has completed her PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the guidance of prof. Ariel Knafo-Noam, where she studied the development of individual differences in empathic behaviors from infancy to early adolescence. She then moved to a postdoctoral position at Columbia University in the City of New York. During her postdoctoral period, she studied how attachment relationships and adverse caregiving experiences (e.g., abuse, neglect) shape emotional behaviors such as fear and reward learning, exploration, emotion differentiation, and emotion regulation in children and adolescents.

.Emotion development; Affective learning; Exploration; Empathy; Personality; Attachment; Caregiving; Abuse and Neglect; Adolescence

1. Abramson, L., Callaghan, B. L., Silvers, J. A., Choy, T., VanTieghem, M., Vannucci, A., Fields, A., & Tottenham, N. (2024). The effects of parental presence on amygdala and mPFC activation during fear conditioning: An exploratory study. Developmental Science, e13505. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13505
2. Abramson, L., Eldar, E., Markovitch, N., & Knafo‐Noam, A. (2023). The empathic personality profile: Using personality characteristics to reveal genetic, environmental, and developmental patterns of adolescents’ empathy. Journal of Personality, 91(3), 753–772. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12772
3. Abramson, L., Paz, Y., & Knafo‐Noam, A. (2019). From negative reactivity to empathic responding: Infants high in negative reactivity express more empathy later in development, with the help of regulation. Developmental Science, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12766
4. Abramson, L., Pener-Tessler, R., Kleper, D., Saudino, K. J., Gagne, J. R., Angel, M., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2024). The structure, development, and etiology of observed temperament during middle childhood. Developmental Psychology, 60(11), 2084–2100. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001818
5. Abramson, L., Petranker, R., Marom, I., & Aviezer, H. (2021). Social interaction context shapes emotion recognition through body language, not facial expressions. Emotion, 21(3), 557–568. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000718
6. Abramson, L., Uzefovsky, F., Toccaceli, V., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2020). The genetic and environmental origins of emotional and cognitive empathy: Review and meta-analyses of twin studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 114, 113–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.03.023