Visual cognitive Neuroscience (VCN) lab
Division of Psychology
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
Research
We investigate the mechanisms underlying visual perception, judgment and behavior. The two main themes are on face perception and self-motion perception.
Face Perception and Emotion
we investigate the influence of prior exposure to stimuli in the visual and auditory modalities that affect our judgment of facial expression and emotion, identity and facial attractiveness. We use psychophysical experiments, eye movement tracking and EEG recordings.
Self-motion Perception and Navigation
In self-motion perception, we investigate the human factors in efficient and effective way-finding and speed thresholds for road users. We use survey studies, psychophysical experiments, eye movement tracking, virtual reality simulation, computational modeling, and onsite mockup test from different perspectives (e.g., the designers, visual perception, user experience, and engineering).
Principal Investigator
I am curious about how we perceive the world, make judgement, and act accordingly? I started to be interested in physiological psychology when I was an undergraduate and research assistant at the State Key Laboratory of Physiological Psychology in Peking University. Then I went to the University of Chicago to study the neural correlates of heading perception and judgment by single unit recording from non-human primates for Ph.D research at the Department of Psychology. At the same time, to analyze the neural data I also studied statistics with a Master’s degree. I then worked on face perception by cross-level visual adaptation in human psychophysics at Columbia University (Center for Neurobiology and Behavior) as a postdoctoral fellow before I joined NTU. My lab at NTU investigates human visual perception (face and heading/navigation in particular), the neural basis for visual perception such as how information processing along the neural pathways (e.g., bottom-up and top-down), the integration of auditory and visual sensory systems, and computational modeling the neural system and behavior.
Research Fellow
Face recognition is an effortless task for the vast majority of us. When we see someone we know, it is easy to recollect details that are linked to this person, such as a name or shared times together. Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia, however, struggle in daily life to easily recall such information that is attached to a face. Through the use of behavioural, EEG and MEG measures, my PhD research at Swansea University focused on answering why these individuals find it so hard to recognise faces. Here at NTU I am continuing my interest in prosopagnosia and how such individuals process different types of visual information.
PhD Students
I received my M.Sc in Psychology in 2010 and postgraduate certificate in cognitive aging and cognitive epidemiology in 2012 (University of Edinburgh). I then began my PhD studies in the Visual Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at NTU in 2012.
My main research interests concern the emotional face perception and emotional influences on behavior. I am currently studying the underlying mechanisms of emotional face perception using both psychophysics and EEG techniques.
I have received my Master degree in 2014, from University of Glasgow; and my Bachelor degree in 2013, from Beijing Forestry University.
My research interest is face perception, especially in how others' facial emotions influence individual's perception of their social characteristics.
My research interest is multisensory emotion perception.
I study the interaction between facial expression and emotional prosody when forming an emotion percept. Essentially, the research question I am asking is whether the two cues are always combined or only do so under certain conditions.
My research interest lies in investigating variation of driver's visual features (e.g. saccade, fixation and blink) in different driving environments. I am also interested in different algorithms for event detection in eye tracking data. Through studying how eye movements cope with real world and cognitive demands, I hope to get a better understanding of how prediction, learning and attention work with sensory signals to contribute to the effective operation of eye movements during driving conditions. Then possibly lead to bridge the gap between intelligent autonomous behaviour and human driving perception (with smooth maneuvers and driving with foresight normally).
Project Officers
I graduated with my Bachelor degree in Psychology in 2016 from NTU, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Currently, I am working on speed perception of simple objects projected to the screen and in virtual reality (VR) simulation, and whether the perception differs from moving objects in real life. Besides perception, I am interested in clinical psychology and human factors.
My current project draws upon research in visual processing and object perception in the real world to design and evaluate systems and products in an empirical setting. Outside of this work, I am also interested in biological, clinical, health, and social psychology research. Currently, I am particularly keen to learn more about psychometrics and sleep psychology.
I have been working as software developer since graduated with computer engineering degree from Shanghai University in 2001.
Now I am helping on the speed threshold project, to build a two-way communication system between physical motion sensor and VR simulator. The data collected from the system can be used to analyze the behavior of road user and finally to increase the road safety.
