Dr. Shiri Pearlman Avnion

• Educational Psychology
• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Theory of Mind
• Meta-Cognition

Teaching in academic institutions

2000-2001    Haifa University – Joint teaching of bachelor’s degree courses in neuropsychology and in hemispheric specialization
2001-2002    Gordon College – Bachelor’s degree courses in neuropsychology, the brain and behavior
2001-2002    Haifa University – Bachelor’s degree course in cognitive development.
2005-2007    Tzefat College, bachelor’s degree courses in learning, development and personality and autism.
2005-2009    Gordon College, bachelor’s degree courses in language and sociability, autism, learning and psychodynamic theories, perception, memory and thought.
2006-2008    Maggid Continuing Education Institute (affiliated with Hebrew University). Language and sociability, perception, memory and thought.
2005-2015    Tel-Hai College. Introduction to psychology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, language and sociability, developmental mental disability, introduction to autism and seminars in language and sociability and later, psychology in education.

 Research Grants 

1997    A general grant for research students from the university, which promoted my doctoral research. The grant was used to travel to a conference and present a poster on the preliminary results of the doctoral research (Item 2 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K– Publications, and Item 2 in Section H – Active Participation in Conferences).
1999-2001    Ford Foundation grant for doctoral students – $4000. This grant helped me complete my doctoral research and present additional findings at a conference in Canada (Item 6 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications, and Item 7 in Section H – Active Participation in Conferences).
1999-2002    I was awarded by two external research grants by the National Institute for Psychobiology, in the amount of $15,000, together with Dr. Zohar Eviatar. The funds were granted in order to expand the population and subjects of my doctorate. The grant also enabled publication of an additional poster (Item 9 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications, and Item 9 in Section H – Active Participation in Conferences); a chapter in an edited volume (Item 1 under Articles or chapters in refereed books in Section K – Publications), and an article (Item 5 under Articles in refereed journals in Section K – Publications,).
2000-2001    Grant from the Graduate Studies Unit of Haifa University, for obtaining funding from an outside research foundation – NIS 8000. The grant enabled me to present more advanced findings of the doctoral research (Item 4 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications, and Item 4 in Section H – Active Participation in Conferences).
2002-2005    Postdoctoral fellowship from the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR), at BUMC (Boston University Medical School), Boston, MA, under the supervision of Prof. Helen Tager-Flusbrg. This scholarship enabled me to complete my postdoctoral studies and to prepare publications (Items 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications, and corresponding Items 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 in Section H – Active Participation in Conferences), and an article (Item 8 under Articles in refereed journals in Section K – Publications,).
2012-2013    I was awarded a grant of NIS 10,000 to complete a research project at Tel-Hai College on the subject of the cause of emotional states.

Awards and Fellowships    
1987-2002    All the years of study reported were funded partially or fully by honors scholarships from Haifa University.

1.  Pearlman-Avnion, S., Koriat, A., & Ben-Zur, H. (1998). The subjective organization of input and output events in memory. Poster presented at the 10th Congress of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. Jerusalem, Israel. September 13-17. (Also appears as Item 1 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
2.     Pearlman-Avnion, S., Eviatar, Z., & Berger, B. (2000). Short-term and long-term social skills of children with developmental linguistic and social-emotional pathologies. Poster presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society. Denver, Colorado, USA. February 9-12. (Also appears as Item 2 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
3.     Pearlman-Avnion, S., & Koriat, A. (2000). Memory organization for enacted and verbally encoded action phrases. Oral presentation presented at the International Conference on Psychology: Psychology After the Year 2000. Haifa, Israel. June 12-14. (Also appears as Item 3 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
4.    Pearlman-Avnion, S., & Eviatar, Z. (2001). Narrative analysis in developmental social and linguistic pathologies: Dissociation between emotional and informational language use. Poster presented at the TENNET XII (Theoretical & Experimental Neuropsychology). Montreal, Canada. June 21-23. (Also appears as Item 4 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
5.   Koriat, A., & Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2001). The enactment of action phrases induces a different memory organization than the verbal encoding of these phrases. Oral presentation presented at the XII Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP) jointly with the XVIII Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society- Cognitive Psychology Section. Edinburgh, Scotland. September 5-8. (Also appears as Item 5 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
6.    Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2002). Theory of mind in developmental pathologies: Theoretic and methodological issues. Poster presented at the 13th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society. Toronto, Canada. February 13-16. (Also appears as Item 6 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
7.    Pearlman-Avnion, S. & Eviatar, Z. (2002). Irony understanding preservation in nonverbal learning disabilities. Poster presented at the 13th Annual Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society. Toronto, Canada. February 13-16. (Also appears as Item 7 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
8.    Pansky, A., Koriat, A., Goldsmith, M., & Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2002). Memory accuracy and distortion in old age: Cognitive, metacognitive, and neurocognitive determinants. Poster presented at the 30th Anniversary Conference of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel. Jerusalem, Israel. March 5. (Also appears as Item 8 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
9.   Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2002). Irony understanding preservation in nonverbal learning disabilities. Poster presented at the 30th Anniversary Conference of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel. Jerusalem, Israel. March 5. (Also appears as Item 9 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
10.     Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2003). TOM in Williams syndrome and autism: An inconsistent profile of proficiency on false belief attribution and irony understanding. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Meeting. New York City, March 30-April 1. (Also appears as Item 10 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
11.    Pearlman-Avnion, S., Plesa-Skwerer, D., Schofield, C., Verbalis, A., &  Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Intonation and content in sarcasm understanding by participants with Williams syndrome. Oral presentation presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. San-Diego, California, March 11-13. (Also appears as Item 11 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
12.     Pearlman-Avnion, S., Condouris, K., Evancie, L., Ehrman, K., & Tager-Flusberg. H. (2004). Intonation and content in sarcasm understanding by participants with autism, with and without language impairment. Oral presentation at the workshop, Autism:  Future Directions. Jerusalem, Israel, March 14-19. (Also appears as Item 12 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
13.    Pearlman-Avnion, S., Condouris, K., Evancie, L., Ehrman, K., & Tager-Flusberg. H. (2004). Intonation and content in sarcasm understanding by participants with autism, with and without language impairment. Oral presentation at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR). Sacramento, California, May 7-8, 2004. (Also appears as Item 13 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
14.    Pearlman-Avnion, S., Plesa-Skwerer, D., Schofield, C., Verbalis, A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Intonation and content in sarcasm understanding by participants with Williams syndrome. Oral presentation and abstract presented in the proceedings of the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. San-Diego, California, March 11-13. (Also appears as Item 14 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
15.    Pearlman-Avnion, S., Plesa-Skwerer, D., Schofield, C., Verbalis, A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Intonation and content in sarcasm understanding by participants with Williams syndrome. Poster presented at the Williams Syndrome Association National Convention 2004, Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 25-26. (Also appears as Item 15 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
16.     Pearlman-Avnion, S., Plesa-Skwerer, D., Schofield, C., Verbalis, A., &  Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Concepts of friendship: A comparative analysis of adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome. Oral presentation presented at the Williams Syndrome Association National Convention 2004, Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 25-26. (Also appears as Item 16 under Refereed conference proceedings in Section K – Publications).
17.     Pearlman-Avnion, S., Lazar, Y., & Moshinsky, T. (2015). Can older people see something apart from themselves? Oral presentation to be presented at the Psychological Sciences–ICEPS 2015, Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 12-13, 2015. 

Participation in conferences:

1.  Seminar for Educational Psychologists, 2007-2013, Israel Psychological Association.
2.     6th International Conference on Child and Adolescent Psychology, Roehampton University, London England, 11-12 July 2011.
3.     European Conference on Personality (ECP) 16, Trieste, Italy, 10-14 July 2012.
4. Lectures by invitation at conferences and mini-conferences on autism:

•    1.    Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2006). Diagnosis of PDD. Educational Psychology Service, Haifa. 
•   2.    Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2006). What is autism? Tools for diagnosis. Rehabilitation and Welfare Department, Haifa.    Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2007). PDD for the educational psychologist: Core characteristics and new research trends. Moderator of mini-conference at the Regional Psychology Conference, Educational Psychology Service, Northern District. Mt. Tabor, 18 June 2007.  Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2008). Is autism an extreme form of the male brain? Baron Cohen’s theory. Differentiated diagnosis of autism and similar diagnoses, and the fascinating discovery of the mirror neurons. Moderation of two mini-conferences, Upper Galilee Educational Psychology Service, December 2008.

   5.  Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2008). The spectrum of communication disabilities: Core characteristics and new research trends. Tefen, 10 April 2008.

    6. Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2008). Adolescence among children on the autism spectrum. Beit Loren Center for the Family Coping with Autism, Aluteva Karmiel, 23 November 2008.

   7. Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2009). Diagnosis of young children. Educational Psychology Services, Tivon.

   8.  Pearlman-Avnion. (2010). Work of educational staff members with parents of students on the communication disorder spectrum, in special education and regular education. Neve Eitan, August 2010.

   9.  Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2011). The autism spectrum and related disorders: How and why to diagnose properly? Issues of differential diagnosis. Moderation of mini-conference, Beit Shean Educational Psychology Service, February 2011.

   10. Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2012). Adolescence among adolescents on the autism spectrum. A training course for health professionals, Ministry of Health, Tel Hashomer, 6 March 2012.

  11.  Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2012). Ways of including children with autism: What is suitable and for whom? EFI-Asperger Israel, Bar-Ilan University, 21 November 2012.

 12.   Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2012). Cultivation and inclusion of children with communication disorders in the education system. Moderation of mini-conference, Lower Galilee Regional Council, prior to opening a special program for children on the autism spectrum, Kadouri, 18 December 2012.

   13. Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2012-2013). Lecture series and training on autism (moderation of 6 monthly day-long sessions). Jordan Valley Educational Psychology Service, Kibbutz Masada/Shaar Hagolan.

   14. Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2013-2014). Lecture series and training on autism (moderation of 6 monthly day-long sessions). Lower Galilee Educational Psychology Service, Kadourie.

  15.   Pearlman-Avnion, S. (2013). Double session on autism. Education Department. Meggido Regional Council.

    16. Pearlman-Avnion, S., (2015). Neuro-Bio-genetic theories of the low prevalence of girls diagnosed with autism, and the consequences of under diagnosis on the course of their emotional development. Oral presentation presented at the Medabrim Autism", Tel-Aviv, Israel, January 15th.