Rachel Schiff

Rachel Schiff is an Israeli education professor who founded and currently chairs the Learning disability|Learning Disabilities MA program at Bar-Ilan University. Schiff also serves as the head of the Haddad Center for the study of Dyslexia and Learning Disabilities at Bar Ilan University. She received her BA, MA and PhD in Special Education from Bar Ilan university. Schiff studies the literacy, Linguistics|linguistic and Cognitive skill|cognitive abilities of adults and children with learning disabilities in general, and dyslexia in particular. Her research provides a knowledge foundation for researchers, educators and practitioners to fully grasp the struggles and challenges of individuals with learning disabilities, and for developing focused intervention program to better the academic achievements of both Hebrew language|Hebrew and Arabic language learners. Schiff has developed diagnosis batteries and implemented various intervention programs for learning disabled throughout the country. She also trains interns preparing to be learning disabilities professional.
== Academic career ==
Schiff has authored and coauthored over 80 publications in academic journals which have been presented in over 160 esteemed and prestigious national and international conferences in China, India, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, France, Canada, UK, and the United States.https://education.biu.ac.il/sites/education/files/shared/schiff_cv_full_professor_updated_nov_2015.pdf She takes a cross-cultural and developmental approach to literacy learning, having published articles on learning to read in Hebrew and Arabic. She is interested in many constructs thought to be fundamental for reading acquisition, including Phonology|phonological sensitivity, morphological awareness, metalinguistic awareness, semantics and Orthographic depth|orthographic transparency. In addition, Schiff's research has considered the Statistical learning in language acquisition|statistical learning abilities of children and adults with dyslexia, as well as typically developed individuals. Using the Artificial Grammar Learning task (AGL), her research looks at factors that hinder and enhance the implicit learning abilities in the abovementioned populations, be it feedback, input diversity, distributed practice or complexity.
Schiff is a sought-after reviewer of articles submitted for publication in many prominent journals such as, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading|Scientific Studies of Reading, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, Dyslexia, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Reading and writing, Annals of Dyslexia and many others. She has co-edited a number of special issues and co-edited a handbook on Interventions in Learning Disabilities. Schiff has founded and served as a chief editor for the Israeli Association for Literacy and Language and a voting member for the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.
=== Grants and awards ===
Schiff's contributions to the study of dyslexia have been recognized with the Ford Foundation grant in 1994, The National Insurance Institute of Israel in 2004, the Israel Science Foundation in 2004, 2008, and 2012, the Israeli Ministry of Education in 2003, 2010, 2012, 2017, and 2018, and the Israel Innovation Authority in 2020.
=== Selected publications ===
* Spelling and morphology in dyslexia: A developmental study across the school years
* The origin of the centrality deficit in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
* Visual and auditory interference control of attention in developmental dyslexia
* Judging Hebrew adjective agreement across development conflicting morphological and syntactic cues
* Morpho-orthographic complexity in affix spelling in Hebrew: A novel psycholinguistic outlook across the school years‏
* Stimulus variation-based training enhances artificial grammar learning
* Artificial grammar learning is facilitated by distributed practice: Evidence from a letter reordering task
* Mind the gap: Semantic information constrains morphological knowledge in low SES
Category:Israeli academics
Category:Bar-Ilan University alumni