Welcome!
About Me
I am a postdoctoral researcher of the Speech Motor Neuroscience Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our group is a collaboration between the Brain, Language, and Acoustic Behavior Lab (PI: Caroline Niziolek) and the Speech Motor Action + Control Lab (PI: Ben Parrell).
I grew up in Chongqing, China’s 4th direct-controlled municipality besides Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Although I can perceive and produce the /in/ and /iŋ/ contrast in Mandarin Chinese, I pretend to have an accent by merging them when speaking Mandarin.
The central theme of my research is Words in Communication (WiC), illustrated in the figure on this page. My vision for research on WiC is that it will integrate knowledge from linguistics, acoustics, speech motor control, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, computer science, and network science, using behavioral experiments, brain recordings, and computational models
WiC related research topics, summarized in keywords: spoken word production, speech motor control, phonetics (speech perception & acoustics), spoken word recognition, lexical tone perception and production, phonological alternation, variation in speech, second language speech (perception, production, and acquisition), individual differences, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, network science
Current project: sensorimotor adaptation as a window to speech movement planning. Subtopics include:
Probing the mental representations of speech motor control at higher linguistic levels, including word-specific representations
Using sensorimotor adaptation to probe and improve second language speech production
Other interests, not directly related to Words in Communication (WiC), summarized as keywords: EEG (electroencephalography) and ERP (event-related potential), prediction in language processing, mismatch negativity (MMN) and its underlying mechanism, N400 in semantic processing and predictive encoding, historical Chinese phonology, classical Chinese poetry
Here is my complete CV.
Contact Information
Brain, Language, and Acoustic Behavior Lab
1500 Highland Drive, Room 483
Madison, WI 53705