Fanxiao Wani Qiu, Ph.D.

About me

I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California, working with Dr. Sandy Latourrette. My research broadly focuses on children’s social-cognitive development and how they understanding teaching and learning. In studying children’s pedagogical cognition, we gain insight into the role children play in cumulative culture and the principles that guide information transmission in children. Specific questions I am interested in studying include: 1) What factors guide children's decisions about what and how to teach others? 2) In what ways do children benefit from different forms of pedagogy? 3) How do children learn so efficiently from few examples? More broadly, I am interested in leveraging our understanding of children's social learning to improve student motivation, innovation, and learning outcomes. 

I received my doctorate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Southern California, advised by Dr. Henrike Moll. Prior to starting my doctoral studies, I taught pre-k and second-grade for 3 years at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, MA. In the Boston area, I worked as a research assistant in Dr. Kathleen Corriveau and Dr. Paul Harris' labs, where I studied children's social cognitive development. I received my masters in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and BA from Swarthmore College, where I studied interest development with Dr. K. Ann Renninger.

Family: My husband, Oscar Leong, is faculty at UCLA in Statistics and Data Science. We welcomed our daughter, Gemma, in May of 2023. 

News

• June 2025: I am honored to receive the American Psychological Association's Div 7 Dissertation Research Grant.

• May 2025: Our commentary on Lew-Levy & Amir's article has been accepted for publication at Brain and Behavioral Sciences.

• May 2025: I successfully defended my dissertation: The Development of Young Children's Pedagogical Cognition!

• January 2025: Our paper on children's teaching of objective information is published in Developmental Psychology.

• October 2024: I successfully proposed my dissertation! 

• October 2024: Our meta-analysis on children's selective teaching and informing is published in Developmental Science.

• June 2024: I presented our work on children's selective teaching of objective information at the Jean Piaget Society in Toronto.

• March 2024: I presented our meta-analysis at the Biennial Conference of the Cognitive Development Society in Pasadena.

• January 2024: Our paper on how children weigh sensationalism and veracity when teaching is published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

• January 2024: I am honored to have been awarded our department's Excellence in Scientific Writing Award.

• January 2024: Our paper on how children vary their instruction depending on the maturity of the listener is published at Child Development. 

• March 2023: I presented our work on children's selective teaching based on the role of the listener at the Society of Research on Child Development in Salt Lake City.