תחילת דף אינטרנט, לחץ אנטר כדי לעבור לאזור תוכן מרכזי
תפריט ראשי של האתר
Associate Professor Nina Koren-Karie (PhD)
Reception hours: By appointment
School of Social Work
My study focuses on representations that parents and children construct regarding their relationships. I study the ways in which these representations shape the parent-child interactions and predict children's adjustment. I am particularly interested in families at risk, such as families in which mothers suffered traumatic childhood experiences, foster children and children with special needs.
My work is focused on two related main domains.
My first area of interest focuses on parents’ ability to show insightfulness regarding their children’s inner world. Insightfulness is seen as the capacity underlying positive parenting and providing the context for secure child-parent attachment. We developed a research procedure (the Insightfulness Assessment – IA) that enable to classify the parent into one Positively insightful group or into one of three non-insightful groups. Many research studies with typical and atypical populations have supported the notion that insightfulness is associated with mothers' sensitive behaviors toward their child and with children's secure attachment toward their mothers.
A related area of research centers on parent-child dialogues about emotional events. In our work, we suggested to look at parent-child dialogues, particularly around the co-construction of narratives about emotional events, as a promising way to assess parents' capacity to sensitively guide their child while he/she explores the world of emotions. We developed the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogues (AEED) coding manual and recent works utilizing this measure show association between AEED classifications obtained during childhood and early attachment.
Selected publications
Koren-Karie, N., Sagi-Schwartz, A., & Joels, T. (2003). Absence of attachment representations (AAR) in the adult years: the emergence of a new AAI classification in catastrophically traumatized Holocaust child survivors. Attachment & Human Development, 5, 381-397.
Koren-Karie, N., Oppenheim, D., & Getzler-Yosef, R. (2004). Mothers who were severely abused during childhood and their children talk about emotions: Co-construction of narratives in light of maternal trauma. Infant Mental Health Journal, 25, 300-317.
Koren-Karie, N., Sagi, A., & Egoz N. (2005). The emotional climate of center care In Israel. Infant Mental Health Journal, 26, 110-126.
Oppenheim, D., Koren-Karie, N., & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2007). Emotion dialogues between mothers and children at 4.5 and 7.5 years: Relations with children's attachment at one year. Child Development, 78, 38-52.
Koren-Karie, N., Oppenheim, D., & Goldsmith, D. (2007). Shift toward insightfulness among mothers of children in a therapeutic preschool: Keeping the inner world of the child in mind. In D. Oppenheim, & D. Goldsmith, (Eds.), Attachment theory and clinical work with children: Bridging the gap between research, and practice (pp.31-57). NY: Guilford.
Koren-Karie, N., Oppenheim, D., & Getzler-Yosef, R. (2008). Shaping children's internal working models through mother-child dialogues: The importance of resolving maternal traumatic past. Attachment & Human Development, 10, 465-483.
Koren-Karie, N., Oppenheim, D., Dolev, S., & Yirmya, N. (2009). Mothers of securely attached children with Autism spectrum disorder are more sensitive than mothers of insecurely attached children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50, 643-650.
Dolev, S., Oppenheim, D., Koren-Karie, N., & Yirmiya, N. (2009). Emotion Availability in mother-child interaction: The case of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Parenting: Science and Practice, 9, 183-197.
Oppenheim, D., Koren-Karie, N., Dolev, S., & Yirmiya, N. (2012). Maternal Sensitivity mediates the link between Maternal Insightfulness/Resolution and Child-Mother attachment: The case of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Attachment and Human Development, 14, 567 – 584.
Koren-Karie, N., Oppenheim, D., Yuval-Adler, S., & Mor, H. (2013). Emotion dialogues of foster caregivers with their children: the role of the caregivers, above and beyond child characteristics, in shaping the interactions. Attachment and Human Development, 15(2), 175-188.
Feniger-Schaal, R., & Koren-Karie, N., and Bareket, M. (2013). Drama therapy focusing on maternal insightfulness: A preliminary report. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 40, 185-191.
Oppenheim, D., & Koren-Karie, N. (2013). The Insightfulness Assessment: Measuring the internal processes underlying maternal sensitivity. Attachment & Human Development, 15, 545-561.
Dolev, S., Oppenheim, D., Koren-Karie, N., & Yirmiya, N. (2014). Inclusive Educational placement in Children with ASD: Prediction from early attachment and maternal Insightfulness. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 8, 958-967.
Hsiao, C., Koren-Karie, N., Moran, G., & Baily, H. (2014). It takes two to talk: Longitudinal associations among infant-mother attachment, maternal attachment representations, and mother-child emotion dialogues. Attachment and Human Development, 1, 307-324.
Koren –Karie, N., & Markman-Gefen, R. (2016). Foster caregivers' insightfulness and emotional investment in foster children, Journal of Social Work, 16, 489-509.
Sher-Cenzor, E., & Koren-Karie, N., Getzov, S., & Rotman, P. (2017). Maternal sensitive guidance of emotional dialogues and adolescents' behavior problems: The mediating role of adolescents' representations of their mothers. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 5, 1-18
Oppenheim, D., & Koren-Karie, N. (2018). Parental Insightfulness into the inner world of the child with Autism: Its significance for the child and implications for parent-mediated interventions. In M. Siller & L. Morgan (Eds.), Handbook of Parent-Implemented Interventions for Very Young Children with Autism (pp. 121 – 140). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Koren-Karie, N., & Aviezer, O. (2017). Mother-child emotion dialogues: The disrupting effect of maternal history of communal sleeping. Attachment & Human Development, 19, 580-597.
Koren-Karie, N., & Oppenhiem, D. (2018). Parental insightfulness: retrospect and prospect. Attachment & Human Development, 20, 223-236.
Shahar-Maharik, T., Oppenheim, D., & Koren-Karie, N. (2018). Adolescent insightfulness toward a close friend: its roots in maternal insightfulness and child attachment in infancy. Attachment & Human Development, 20, 237-254.
Koren-Karie, N., & Getzler-Yosef, R. (2018). Mothers' insightfulness regarding their children's inner world is related to their history of sexual abuse but moderated by resolution of the trauma. Attachment & Human Development, 21, 582-596.
Overbeek, M. M., Koren-Karie, N., Erez Ben-Him, A., Schipper, J. C., Dreier Gligoor, P. D., & Schuengel, C. (2019). Trauma exposure and its relations to the content of mother-child emotional conversations and quality of interaction. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(5), 805.
Oppenheim, D., Koren-Karie, N., & Joels, T. (2019). Social motivation in children with Autism: Support from Attachment research: Commentary on "Being vs. Appearing Socially Uninterested: Challenging Assumptions about Social Motivation in Autism" by Vikram K. Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar, Brain and Behavior Development, 42, 39-41.
Cimino, S., Cerniglia, L., Trambelli, R., Ballarotto, G., Erriu, M., Paccielo, M., Oppenheim, D., & Koren-Karie, N. (2020). Dialogues about emotional events between mothers with Depression, Anxiety, and Anorexia Nervosa and their children. Parenting: Science and Practice, 20, 69-82.
Levy, G., Oppenheim, D., Koren-Karie, N., Cohen, E, Gal, N., & Yirmiya, N. (in press). The relationship between Disruptive Maternal Behavior and attachment disorganization in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Attachment & Human Development.