Daphna Dollberg

• Ph.D.
• Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo

Despite substantial evidence indicating an association between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and psychological distress, the psychological mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. This naturally occurring, cross‐sectional study examines the mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation and the moderating effects of expos...

Parent-child psychotherapy, also known as dyadic or triadic psychotherapy, is gaining recognition in child psychotherapy. It is used as a treatment intervention for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers (ages 0-6) who display behavioral and emotional difficulties, as well as a preventive intervention for young children at risk. This chapter explores...

Psicoterapia Integrativa Para Padres: Uso del Enfoque de Psicodinámica Cíclica Este artículo explora las formas en que el marco de la psicodinámica cíclica puede ser aplicado a la psicoterapia de los padres para mejorar la sintomatología de hijo. Se argumenta que trabajar terapéuticamente con los padres requiere un enfoque integrativo que utilice m...

Objective Investigating concordance between parents' mentalization and their moderating effects on the link between children's exposure to marital conflict and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Background Marital conflict is a risk factor for children's behavior. Mentalization is a parental strength that can protect children's well‐being...

This review outlines the literature concerning the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on parenting, focusing on how childhood trauma in parents might impede the development of adaptive parental mentalizing skills. Non-adaptive parental mentalizing may lead to non-mentalizing cycles between parents and children, which can put the child's...

Introduction Children of mothers with a history of adverse childhoods are at greater risk of behavior problems. However, the mechanisms through which a mother’s early adverse experiences (ACEs) are transmitted to her children need further study. Our goal was to examine a conceptual mediational model linking mothers’ ACEs, maternal psychopathology s...

Research has suggested adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) as a transdiagnostic risk factor for a variety of affective disorders. They are also linked with a parent's tendency toward affect dysregulation and hyperarousal, which may interfere with parenting and children's wellbeing. On the other hand, maternal mentalization can serve as a moderatin...

We examined group differences between parents, both mothers and fathers, of premature and full-term infants to determine whether they differed in their reports of subjective parenting stress and in their level of parental reflective functioning (PRF). We also tested whether each parent's reflective functioning moderated the links between birth stat...

We examined the direct and indirect links between COVID-19, maternal anxiety symptoms, and child behavior problems as well as the mediation-moderation links of mothers’ anxiety symptoms and mentalization skills with the prediction of child behavior problems. A sample of 140 Israeli mothers with preschool children comprised the study’s two groups: A...

The outbreak of COVID-19 is affecting the lives of millions of families around the world. The current study was carried out in Israel, following the pandemic’s initial outbreak and during the resulting enforced quarantine, confining parents and children to their homes. A sample of 141 Israeli mothers with at least one child between the ages of 3 an...

The outbreak of COVID-19 is affecting the lives of millions of families around the world. The current study was carried out in Israel, following the pandemic's initial outbreak and during the resulting enforced quarantine, confining parents and children to their homes. A sample of 141 Israeli mothers with at least one child between the ages of 3 an...

We examined the links between mothers’ prenatal attachment dimensions, parental mentalization and mother-infant relational patterns. The sample consisted of 68 mother-infant dyads. During pregnancy, mothers reported on attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. When the infants were three months old, the mothers’ parental reflective functioning (PRF...

The goal of this study is to integrate family systems theory, reflected in the construct of coparenting, with the attachment theory's concept of mentalization and how they are linked with children's behavior problems. We investigate the direct, indirect, and moderating links between mothers' and fathers' perceived coparenting, parental mentalizatio...

This study examined the psychopathology and socioemotional functioning of school-aged children treated during infancy and a comparison group of children without symptoms or treatment history. Our goal was to identify the factors associated with the continuity of psychopathology from infancy to childhood. The sample comprised 54 Israeli children, 30...

Background and objectives: Evolutionary theories propose that socially anxious individuals are especially sensitive to social-rank signals, presumably at the expense of the attunement to signals of affiliation. Despite this theoretical claim, few empirical attempts examined the association between social anxiety (SA) and sensitivity to specific fe...

The present study examined whether inadequate parental care has a long-term impact on pathological relational entitlement in romantic relations, and whether this impact is mediated by insecure attachment style. Our cohort of 335 Israeli adults completed Sense of Relational Entitlement (SRE), Experience in Close Relationships (ECR), and Parental Bon...

Our objective was to expand understanding of the associations between fathers’ and mothers’ anxiety symptoms, their perceptions of marital quality, and their children’s maladjustment behaviors. Sixty Israeli families with a child aged 3–5 participated. Mothers and fathers completed self-report questionnaires assessing parents’ anxiety symptoms, mar...

Parental mentalizing—recognizing that children are separate psychological entities, who have their own thoughts, wishes, and intentions that motivate their behaviors—is traditionally considered a verbal, linguistic capacity. This paper aimed to examine the relation between parental verbal mentalizing (parental reflective function; PRF) and its nonv...

Objectives: To examine the examined the effects of high risk pregnancy and prenatal distress on parental postnatal adaptation. METHODS: A sample of 111 expecting parents, consisting of 32 high risk pregnancy (HRP) mothers and 21 spouses and 36 matched low risk pregnancy (LRP) mothers and 22 spouses completed reports of depression symptoms (BDI) an...

Infants adopted from institutions experience inadequate care prior to adoption and are therefore expected to show elevated sustained social withdrawal behavior shortly after being adopted. Social withdrawal is expected to decrease as they adapt to their new families. Sustained social withdrawal was assessed 1 month’ postadoption (Time 1) and again...

To examine how relational behavior and maternal representations are manifested before and after parent-infant psychotherapy, mothers’ and infants’ behaviors and maternal narratives were assessed in 45 clinic-referred dyads who participated in psychodynamically informed parent-infant psychotherapy. Pretreatment and posttreatment assessments included...

Background: Congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI) is the most common cause of persistent hypoglycemia in infants. Its management can be extremely complicated, and may involve medical therapy and surgery. The mainstay of the treatment is to maintain normoglycemia, since hypoglycemia during infancy can have severe neurological consequences. Objective:...

Anger is an intense and adaptive approach emotion that undergoes significant development during the toddler years. We assessed the expression of anger and the strategies toddlers use to regulate it in relation to maternal behavior and mental representations. Seventy-four toddlers were observed in three anger-eliciting paradigms: toy removal (TR), s...

Family functioning and mother-infant relational patterns were examined in 38 clinic-referred infants and 34 matched non-referred infants. Referred infants were diagnosed with the Diagnostic Classification for Zero to Three. On the family level, referred families showed significantly lower family functioning in all domains of emotional and instrumen...

The study examined differences in parental satisfaction associated with solitary and parent–child co‐sleeping in a sample (N = 61) of Israeli families with children ranging in age from 12 to 48 months (M = 28.04, SD = 10.71). Questionnaire data regarding the family sleeping arrangement, parental satisfaction with the sleeping arrangement, child tem...

To examine the relations between maternal representations, infant socio-emotional difficulties, and mother-child relational behavior, 49 clinic-referred infants and their mothers were compared to 30 non-referred controls. Clinic-referred infants' psychiatric status was determined with the DC 0-3-R classification of Zeanah and Benoit (Child Adolesc...

To examine the relations between infants' sustained withdrawal behavior and children's mental health status and maternal and child relational behavior, 36 clinic-referred and 43 control infants were evaluated. Families were visited at home, mother-child free play and feeding interactions were videotaped, and mothers completed self-report measures....

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-159). Photocopy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-159). Department: Education. Microfilm.