• Ambiguity Processing

• Lexical Processing

• Brain Lateralization

• Aging Effects

• Bodily Self-Consciousness

• Multi-Sensory Integration

• Sense of Body Ownership

• Sense of Agency

• Consciousness

Dafna Bergerbest, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology, School of Behavioral Sciences, The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. My recent work focuses on two major topics: (1) The cognitive processes underlying comprehension of ambiguous language, including ambiguation vs. disambiguation, bottom-up and top-down relationships between semantic, phonological and orthographic representations in ambiguous language, and effects of aging on brain lateralization of the relationships between these representations. (2) The cognitive processes underlying conscious experience, including effects of attention on conscious experience, the use of numerosity as a tool to study idiosyncratic transfer-functions between the world and its representation, and the multi-modality processes underlying sense of body ownership and sense of agency.

1. Salti, M., & Bergerbest, D. (2022). The Idiosyncrasy Principle: A new look at qualia. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17456916221082118.‏

2. Givoni, S., Bergerbest, D., & Giora, R. (2021). Marking multiple meanings: Salience and context effects. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, Special Issue: Katz – Language and Communication, 75(2), 204–210.

3. Givoni, S., Bergerbest, D. & Giora, R. (2021). On figurative ambiguity, marking, and low-salience meanings. In: A. Soares da Silva (Ed.), Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage. (pp. 241-284). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

4. Heruti, V., Bergerbest, D., & Giora, R. (2019). A linguistic or pictorial context: Does it make a difference? Discourse Processes, 56(8), 748–763.

5. Peleg, O., Norman, T., & Bergerbest, D. (2018). Phonological effects in visual word recognition: Evidence from the processing of two types of Hebrew acronyms. Journal of Research in Reading, 41, S1-S11.

6. Bergerbest, D., Shilkrot, O., Joseph, M., & Salti, M. (2017). Right visual-field advantage in the attentional blink: Asymmetry in attentional gating across time and space. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 79, 1979-1992.

7. Peleg, O., Edelist, L., Eviatar, Z., & Bergerbest, D. (2016). Lexical factors in conceptual processes: The relationship between semantic representations and their corresponding phonological and orthographic lexical forms. Memory & Cognition, 44, 519-537.

8. Druker, A., Fein, O., Bergerbest, D., & Giora, R. (2014). On sarcasm, social awareness, and gender. Humor, 27(4), 551-573.

9. Givoni, S., Giora, R., & Bergerbest, D. (2013). How speakers alert addressees to multiple meanings. Journal of Pragmatics, 48, 29-40.

10. Bergerbest, D., Gabrieli, J.D.E., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Kim, H., Stebbins, G.T., Bennett, D.A., & Fleischman, D.A. (2009). Age-associated reduction of asymmetry in prefrontal function and preservation of conceptual repetition priming. NeuroImage, 45, 237-246.

11. Bergerbest, D., Ghahremani, D. G., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2004). Neural correlates of auditory repetition priming: reduced fMRI activity in auditory cortex.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 966-977.

12. Bergerbest, D., & Goshen-Gottstein, Y. (2002). The origins of levels-of-processing effects in a conceptual test: evidence for automatic influences of memory from the process-dissociation procedure. Memory & Cognition, 30, 1252-1262.