Autism, Research and Intervention Laboratory
Prof. Bauminger-Zviely’s ARI laboratory at the Faculty of Education is at the forefront of basic and applied research on the social-emotional development and peer relations of children with autism including novel manualized evidenced-based social interventions. Over the last three decades, Prof. Bauminger-Zviely’s ARI Lab developed multidimensional evidenced-based social intervention as well as assessment procedures and scales to evaluate the autism social phenotype.
The ARI lab’s research activities span two main areas: 1. Development of Evidenced-based ecological national and international wellrecognized peer and social intervention protocols: The Preschool Peer Social Intervention (PPSI) (Bauminger-Zviely, Eytan, Hoshmand, & Rajwan Ben Shlomo, 2020, 2021); Communicating Without Words: School-based RCT social intervention in minimally verbal peer dyads with ASD (Bauminger-Zviely et al., 2020); CognitiveBehavioral-Ecological (CBE) Intervention (Bauminger, 2002, 2007a,b; BaumingerZviely, 2013); and Multitouch Collaboration Technology: No-problem and Join-in technology (Bauminger-Zviely et al., 2013; Gal et al., 2016; Weiss et al., 2016; Zancanaro et al., 2014). 2. Development of a naturalistic assessment procedure to evaluate the autism social phenotype ů To evaluate peer interaction and friendship – Social Interaction Observation (SIO; Bauminger et al., 2002, 2003, 2007a,b); Autism Peer Interaction Observation Scale for Preschool (APIOS- Bauminger-Zviely & Shefer, 2021); Friendship Observation Scale (FOS) for school ages and adolescence (e.g., Bauminger et al., 2008a,b, 2010a,b; Solomon et al., 2011); FOS-Young (FOS-Y) for preschoolers (e.g., Bauminger-Zviely & Agam Ben Artzi, 2014); ů To evaluate socio-communication – Peer talk: Pragmatic Rating Scale-Young (PRS-Y), adaptation of the PRS for preschoolers (Bauminger-Zviely et al., 2014, JCPP); Speech acts: adaptation of the Speech Acts Taxonomy (SAT) to Hebrew and autism (Bauminger-Zviely et al., 2017)
The ARI labs’ evidenced-based intervention protocols are ecological which means that they are operated within schools and preschools by the psychoeducation staff supported by the ARI’s research team, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, and autism associations such as ALUT and Otti-children’s at-risk association. We provide many workshops on our intervention models and assessment procedures to psychoeducational staff across Israel. In addition, the intervention protocols are being studied and practiced in our clinical practicum during the autism MA studies.
The ARI Lab research activities yielded so far 2 books at Guilford and Springer, numerous book chapters and journal articles as well as national and international presentations on the field of autism and peer relations, friendship, social intervention, social emotions, social cognition, and social communication. Ari’s research activities are well-supported by grants (e.g., ISF, BSF, EU) and we provide international workshops on our intervention models (e.g., the PPSI workshop at the Ministry of Education in Geneva). The ARI laboratory research products are widespread nationally and internationally!
The ARI’s laboratory provides research fields for many MA, PhD, and post-Doc students (over 100 past and current) and works very closely with the autism MA specialization program at the faculty of education headed by Prof. Bauminger-Zviely. Current research team: 1. Post-Doc students 2. Dr. Shahar Bar-Yehuda; Dr. Yael Estrugo; Dr. Einat Karin 3. PhD students 4. Roni Poyas Naharan; Moti morgan 5. MA students 6. Miri Yardeni; Michal Maman; Tamar Gerbi
Last Updated Date : 27/11/2025
