Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 25 June 2025)

Title:

The early reading development: Insights from Chinese young children’s studies

Children's reading skills begin to develop long before they enter school. In this talk, based on the classical models of reading development, I will present my research group's recent studies regarding the relationship between home literacy environment and children's reading development, as well as the crucial role of morphological awareness. Additionally, I will share the recent findings on the neural mechanisms underlying Chinese character reading development, which are derived from the data in Chinese Color Nest Project: An accelerated longitudinal brain-mind cohort. The future research directions will be discussed as well.

About the Speaker:

Su Li is a Psychological Professor at the Institute of psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is the vice director of the Lab of Cognitive and Developmental Psychology now. Su Li employs a variety of research methods and techniques in her research. In recent years, Su Li is trying to combine the factors at behavioral, neural (EEG) and contextual levels to characterize the developmental mechanisms of early reading acquisition.

Title:

A Dimensional approach to neurodivergence in attention control: identifying functional and structural signatures of atypical attention

Attention control and specifically distractor suppression is a fundamental process that is called upon in a variety of scenarios. In fact, different scenarios might also depend on our inherent ‘inability’ to suppress distractors (imagine crossing the road while focusing on your phone…) or our ability to utilise different modes of attention control (e.g., static vs. dynamic). It is therefore not surprising that accumulating evidence points to attention control atypicality in a variety of neurodivergent conditions such as ADHD, autism and even psychosis (and the broader spectrum of their traits in neurotypical participants). Nevertheless, previous reports have been mixed in the direction of these effects, highlighting scenarios of both beneficial and detrimental outcomes (using a categorical approach to these conditions). Recent work in my lab attempts to delineate the specific effect autism, ADHD and psychosis tendencies have on attention control and distractor suppression. Using a combination of behavioural, brain imaging, and brain stimulation studies our findings support a more nuanced understanding of the attention control profile associated with these conditions. Importantly, we show that the degree each of these conditions is expressed in an individual is linked with performance and with signatures of both brain function and structure. This strongly supports the notion of neurodivergent conditions as dimensions that drive the attention control system in a specific direction.

About the Speaker:

Carmel completed his undergraduate degree in psychology and computer sciences at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He later moved on to develop a new computerised assessment and training batteries for children and adults with ADHD following which he arrived at Birmingham to study for a Ph.D. with Professor Glyn Humphreys investigating mechanisms of salience-based selection. He then continued his training in cognitive neuroscience methods in a couple of post-doc positions (ESRC, MRC) before taking up a lectureship position in 2010 becoming an associate professor in 2020. His lab – Cognitive Neuroscience of Atypical Attention, utilises a combination of methodologies (including brain imaging, brain stimulation, and individual differences) to understand brain mechanisms underlying atypical attention control in a variety of contexts. Work in the lab also focuses on translational research into developing attention control, specifically in neurodivergent individuals.

Title:

Lingering episodic memory modes reflect adaptations to autocorrelation in the natural environment

How do humans prioritize between episodic retrieval versus episodic encoding? Empirically, stimulus familiarity triggers a lingering retrieval mode, even if that stimulus is task-irrelevant. However, it is unclear why task-irrelevant stimuli should bias hippocampal computation. We hypothesized that these properties reflect adaptation to the autocorrelation of natural experiences. By training a neural network model that learns a control policy of EM – to decide when to retrieve versus encode – to support downstream tasks, we found that empirically observed memory mode effects emerged in an autocorrelated training environment. Moreover, immersing human subjects in strongly autocorrelated experiences strengthened their memory mode. These results suggest that the human brain can dynamically configure its EM policy in response to the structure of the environment.

About the Speaker:

Qihong Lu is an Alan Kanzer Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, working on neural network models of how episodic memory supports downstream tasks with Daphna Shohamy and Stefano Fusi. He earned his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Princeton University, where he worked with Ken Norman and Uri Hasson on the influences of event structure on episodic memory. His research has been published in prestigious journals, including eLife and PLoS Computational Biology. Additionally, Dr. Lu contributes to the Brain Imaging Analysis Kit (BrainIAK), an open-source Python package that applies advanced machine learning methods and high-performance computing to neuroimaging data analysis.

Title:

The Adaptive Listener: Evidence for Speech Perceptual Learning Across Timescales

Speech perception is a dynamic process, requiring listeners to adapt to variability in the acoustic signal across different contexts and experiences. This talk discusses perceptual learning in speech across multiple timescales, from rapid adaptation occurring within minutes to medium-term adjustments over weeks and months, and long-term effects resulting from immersive language experiences. These findings will be interpreted within a theoretical framework on adaptive speech perception, emphasizing the interplay between short-term adaptivity and long-term learning. By bridging evidence from experimental studies and computational approaches, this talk will shed light on the remarkable capacity of human listeners to learn and adapt in a constantly changing linguistic world.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Xie's research explores how robust speech perception occurs among individuals with diverse cognitive abilities, in cross-linguistic communicative contexts, and in response to cognitive changes across the lifespan. She takes an integrated approach, combining corpus development, computational modeling, large-scale behavioral testing, and functional MRI. Her current work focuses on the adaptivity of adults' speech perception system, aiming to generate new insights into the roles of audition, linguistic experience, and cognition in everyday speech processing.

Title:

The Who, When and Why Talking to Oneself is Beneficial

About the Speaker:

Karen Dobkins received her PhD in the Neuroscience in 1992 and has been a professor of Psychology at UC San Diego since 1995. Although she studied brain development in children for many years, in 2019, she switched her research focus and is now the director of the Human Experience and Awareness Lab (HeaLab), which investigates why humans flourish vs. flounder (through studies of connection to nature, mindfulness, romantic relationship satisfaction, self-talk, derogation of others).  Complementing her research, in 2019, she created a 1 unit P/NP course in Psychology entitled “Learning Sustainable Well-Being (LSW): Compassion for Self and Others” and her lab recently published a Frontiers paper arguing the need for the course and presents data showing its efficacy in improving well-being.   In Fall 2024, she became co-director of the first-ever Learning Sustainable Well-Being program at UCSD, in which other faculty are trained to teach the compassion course in their home department. 

   Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 18 March 2025)

Title:

Social Relationship Expectations: A new approach to loneliness

Loneliness is defined as the discrepancy between expected and actual social relationships. The Social Relationship Expectations (SRE) Framework leverages this core mechanism of loneliness to conceptualize what individuals expect from their relationships. By examining loneliness through the lens of these expectations and their contextual influences, the SRE Framework offers a novel perspective on loneliness theory, qualitative research, scale development, and interventions. Notably, the SRE Framework integrates lifespan developmental theories while highlighting structural factors—such as migration, poverty, and stigma—that contribute to loneliness. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how the SRE Framework can (i) be applied to research on loneliness, with examples from lower- and middle-income countries and (ii) be used to inform intervention development.

About the Speaker:

Samia C. Akhter-Khan is a psychologist, mixed methods and global mental health researcher, currently completing her PhD at King’s College London. She is interested in healthy aging, care, and loneliness with a focus on Southeast Asia. Samia has investigated the links between loneliness and dementia in the Framingham Heart Study and has worked on reports for HelpAge International and the World Health Organization.

Title:

The evolution and development of language and morality

Language and morality are two striking forms of uniquely human social cognition. This talk examines their shared roots in evolution and ontogeny. Evolutionarily, the ancestral context of interdependent collaborative foraging selected for humans with adaptations for cooperation, including communication (e.g., language) and social normativity (e.g., morality). Starting early in ontogeny, human children use language in normative ways, such as to initiate, preserve, revise, and act on social norms.

About the Speaker:

Leon Li is a postdoctoral researcher at Leipzig University, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research focuses on language, moral development, and social cognition. Leon obtained his Ph.D., advised by Dr. Michael Tomasello, in 2022 from Duke University.

   Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 18 March 2025)

Title:

Microsecond-precise timing in the human auditory system and its implication for better prosthetic hearing through cochlear implants

In this talk I will briefly review the way your auditory system captures and encodes the sounds in your environment, and highlight an aspect that is often neglected in introductory textbooks or courses, namely that the auditory pathway must be capable of measuring temporal intervals in the order of a few tens of microseconds to perform routine hearing tasks, such a identifying musical intervals in melodies or sound source directions. I will then describe how contemporary neuroprosthetic devices designed to restore hearing in the deaf sadly largely ignore the remarkable temporal precision that our auditory system is capable of, and review a few recent studies from my lab that point to how these technologies might be improved. 

About the Speaker:

Jan Schnupp graduated from University College London with a Bachelor in Genetics in 1990 and obtained a doctorate in Neurophysiology from the University of Oxford in 1996 and a bachelor in mathematical sciences from the Open University in 2006. He was a junior research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford and a visiting research fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison before joining the faculty of the University of Oxford in 2002, where he was promoted to Professor in 2010. In 2016, Jan joined the faculty of City University of Hong Kong and in 2024 he moved to the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he now holds a joint appointment with the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Institute, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the Department of Otorhinolaryngology. 

Title:

Cracking the Neurocomputational Mechanisms of Flexible (Social) Behaviour in Health and Disease

Flexible (learning) behaviour refers to the adaptive change of behaviour in response to changing environmental contingencies. Although flexible learning behaviour has been studied extensively in the past, very little is known about its neurocomputational mechanism. In this talk, I will first illustrate how to assess flexible learning behaviour through the lens of computational modelling, then I will showcase two studies, one (fMRI study) focusing on flexible learning in a social context, and the other (behavioural study with large sample) focusing on flexible learning in individuals with autism. These studies are expected to motivate new research avenues in social neuroscience and computational psychiatry.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Lei Zhang is an associate professor at the Centre for Human Brain Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, UK. He directs the Adaptive Learning Psychology & Neuroscience (ALPN) Lab, where he addresses the fundamental question of the “adaptive brain” in healthy individuals (across the lifespan), and in psychiatric disorders. To achieve this, he uses both theory-driven and data-driven computational approaches, together with behavioural measurements and neuroimaging. He studied psychology in China, obtained his PhD in Germany, and received postdoc experience in Germany and Austria. Dr. Zhang received multiple international recognitions including the Credibility Prizes from the British Neuroscience Association (2024) and the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (2022). He is an Editorial Board Member for Communications Biology and PLOS Computational Biology, and has served as a reviewing expert for 60+ journals and 5 international research funding agencies.

 Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 4 March 2025)

Title:

Memory editing during human sleep 

Not all memories are welcome by the mind. Over-consolidation of aversive or traumatic memories poses significant threats to our emotional well-being. Can we edit aversive memories during sleep, bypassing conscious awareness? Our recent work suggests that the sleep-mediated memory reactivation can be leveraged to weaken aversive memories. Via unobtrusively delivering sensory cues during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep (targeted memory reactivation), both affect tones and memory contents of aversive memories can be modified. Cueing benefits are associated with cue-elicited EEG power, and with the coupling between EEG slow oscillations and spindles. These results suggest that sleep-mediated memory reactivations play adaptive roles in memory editing and forgetting.

About the Speaker:

Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 22 Jan 2025)

Title:

Fostering Student-Generative AI Co-Creation

In this talk, Professor Mark Chong will share key insights from his experience of fostering students’ abilities to co-create with generative AI in his AI storytelling course. In addition, he will share the findings of his empirical study on GenAI use in the classroom and its effects on students’ intellectual risk-taking (IRT). The findings show that there was a main effect of GenAI use on IRT – students’ IRT scores were significantly higher after the course than before the course. The study also showed that the effect of GenAI use was more pronounced for females compared to males, as the former had a greater increase in IRT scores after the course.

About the Speaker:

Mark Chong is Professor of Communication Management (Practice) at Singapore Management University. He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the SMU Excellent Teacher Awards (both undergraduate and postgraduate), MBA Teaching Excellence Award, Most Promising Teacher Award, and the SMU Teaching Excellence Honour Roll. He teaches the Storytelling with AI course to both undergraduate and MBA students.

Mark’s new research focuses on the psychological dimensions of human-GenAI co-creation. His ongoing interdisciplinary research investigates the perception and acceptance of novel food technologies. This work has been published in journals such as Journal of Environmental Psychology, Appetite, Future Foods, Nature Biotechnology and Journal of Risk Research. Mark received his PhD from Cornell University.

Title:

Age stereotypes – core determinants of development in old age

Previous research on age stereotypes is characterized by several blind spots: It has focused (a) on general stereotypes, neglecting domain-specific views on aging, (b) on descriptive stereotypes, neglecting prescriptive age norms, and (c) on shared beliefs, neglecting individual and age-related differences in the endorsement of age stereotypes. Taking into account the complexities of age stereotypes provides a deeper understanding of their functions, acquisition, and implications for life span development. Recent studies from our lab show that differences in the endorsement of age stereotypes reflect internalization and projection processes. They serve the function of organizing development, but they also limit developmental options by propagating rigid normative views of old age and ageing.

About the Speaker:

Klaus Rothermund is a leading expert in aging research and life-span development, serving as Full Professor and Chair of General Psychology at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Germany. A major focus of his research is on age stereotypes, and on how views on aging influence development in old age. For more than a decade, he has been the speaker of the international and interdisciplinary research consortium “Aging as Future”, addressing topics of internalization of age stereotypes, preparation for old age, and age discrimination. He has served as co-chair of the expert committee for the 9^th Aging Report of the Federal Government of Germany, and wrote a review on ageism for the Anti-Discrimination Agency of the Federal Republic of Germany. He participated as work group chair for the European Cost Action “No-to-Ageism”. He is editor-in-chief for the journal Cognition & Emotion, and member of the editorial board of Psychology & Aging and Life Span Development and Mental Health.

 Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 5 Dec 2024)

Title:

Cross-linguistic predictors of reading development: Synergies between cognitive and environment factors

In this presentation, I will walk you through my research on cross-linguistic predictors of reading, including both alphabetic and non-alphabetic orthographies, paying particular attention on the synergies between cognitive and environmental factors.

About the Speaker:

Dr. George Georgiou is a full professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and the Director of the J. P. Das Centre on Developmental and Learning Disabilities. His research focuses on the prevention and remediation of reading disabilities across languages. In 2020, he was seconded to Alberta Education to oversee the development and implementation of the new English Language Arts curriculum. He is currently in charge of developing local norms for the mandatory literacy screening in Alberta. For his research he has received several awards including the Killam Professorship, the McCalla Professorship and the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal. In 2018, he was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.

Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 26 Nov 2024)

Title:

Understanding, preventing and treating eating disorders: A brief presentation of some of our studies

Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder are common conditions with significant negative impact on health and well-being of those afflicted. Anorexia nervosa has one of the highest mortality rates among all psychiatric disorders. In this seminar, I present some of our studies aiming to identify risk factors for the emergence of eating disorders using longitudinal studies, as well as our efforts to prevent actual emergence of eating disorder, and not just reduction of some risk factors, along with studies to improve the outcome of treatments (CBT, ACT, DBT) for adults with various eating disorders.

About the Speaker:

Ata Ghaderi is a research group leader and a full professor of clinical psychology at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. His main research interests are prevention and treatment of eating disorders, conduct disorder, and obesity. He has supervised 25 students to PhD and published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers.

Title:

Cognitive division of the nominal system: the case of gender and classifiers

Many Indo-European languages, including Dutch and German, have grammatical gender: nouns either have masculine, feminine, or neuter gender, and that has important repercussions on grammatical agreement in phrases such as “silberner Löffel” (silver_MAS spoon_MAS), “silberne Gabel” (silver_FEM fork_FEM), or “silbernes Messer” (silver_NEU knife_NEU). However, why is spoon masculine (_MAS) in German (“der Löffel”), while fork is feminine (_FEM) (“die Gabel”), and knife is neuter (_NEU) (“das Messer”)? The answer is probably that the human cognitive system developed grammatical gender in German to subcategorize its nominal system and to bring some structure to the German mental lexicon. The psychological reality of the grammatical feature ‘gender’ has been demonstrated, e.g., in the form of the gender congruency effect. However, many languages do not have grammatical gender, such as Mandarin Chinese, but make use of classifiers. In this talk, I will show that grammatical gender and classifiers fulfil very similar functions and behave similarly in language processing. This supports claims that have been made by theoretical linguists arguing that gender and classifiers are grammatical features functioning     on the same spectrum. From a cognitive perspective the interesting issue is how human cognition has been able to develop at least two different ways, i.e., gender and classifiers, to achieve similar functions in language processing, i.e., subcategorizing the nominal system of language.

About the Speaker:

Niels Schiller received his MA in phonetics, German language and linguistics, and computational linguistics from Trier University (Germany) in 1994. The same year, he was awarded a scholarship from the German Max Planck Society to carry out his PhD research at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In 1997, he received his PhD in Psychology from the Radboud University in Nijmegen. In his PhD dissertation, he investigated the role of the syllable in lexical access during speech production.

After his PhD, he was a post-doctoral research fellow with the Cognitive Neuropsychology Laboratory of the Psychology Department at Harvard University (1998-2000) and a research scientist of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at Maastricht University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (2000-2003). In 2004, he was appointed professor of psycholinguistics at Maastricht University and in 2006 he moved to Leiden to become professor of psycho- and neurolinguistics at Leiden University. 

Since 2024, he is Chair Professor of Psycho- and Neurolinguistics at City University of Hong Kong and Head of Department of Linguistics and Translation. His research interests include lexico-syntactic, morphological, and phonological encoding processes in mono- and multilingual language production.

Title:

Neurofunctional decoding and modulation of conscious emotional experience in humans – towards ecologically valid models

The combination of advanced decoding models with affective neuroimaging has allowed the development of precise and comprehensive neurofunctional fMRI signatures for conscious emotional experiences in humans. The talk will outline the development of fMRI-based whole-brain signatures for accurately decoding conscious emotional experiences (e.g. feelings of fear, anxiety, disgust) and their modulation by neuropeptides (e.g. Oxytocin, Angiotensin II) in humans. The talk will conclude with a critical reflection on how these neuroaffective markers can be translated into ecologically valid signatures for capturing dynamic emotional experiences under close to real-world conditions and for facilitating the evaluation of novel treatments for fear and anxiety.

About the Speaker:

Benjamin Becker is currently a Full Professor at The University of Hong Kong (Department of Psychology) and Director of the Neuroscience of Cognition, Affect and Motivation Lab and the Becker Affect and Motivation Lab. He received his Master and PhD Degrees at the Universities of Trier and Duesseldorf (Germany) and underwent further training at the University of Bonn (Germany). Over the last ten years he has established and led independent international research teams in Germany, China Mainland and Hong Kong (Beckerlab.org). His research aims to explore how the human brain regulates emotional and motivational experiences, how these processes become dysfunctional in mental disorders and how these processes can be modulated by innovative technological and pharmacological means. To this end his team capitalizes on an entire array of strategies, including advanced MRI-neuroimaging, AI-inspired neural decoding, real-time closed-loop brain modulation and pharmacological neuroenhancement (oxytocin, angiotensin II, etc). The endevors led to more than 250 original publications in international journals including Nature Human Behaviour, Advanced Science, Nature Communications, PNAS, Molecular Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry and perspective articles in Nature, TICS, Nature Reviews in Psychology, etc. (> 10000 citations, H-index 54). Professor Becker currently serves on the editorial boards of several international journals, including Psychopharmacology (Principal Editor), Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, or Psychoradiology and was the founding section editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Social and Affective Neuroimaging. He is Clarivate World’s Top 1% scholar in 2024, co-director of the COVID-induced Brain Dysfunction task force of the Global Brain Consortium, and coordinator of the Cognitive Science Programme at the HKU.

Title:

Using eye-tracking experiments and computer simulations to understand skim reading

In this talk, I will discuss recent efforts to use eye-tracking experiments and a computer model of eye-movement control (E-Z Reader; Reichle et al., 2012) to better understand how the mental processes that support the comprehension of text during normal reading might change when people engage in skimming.  This work suggests that skimming reflects strategic changes in cognition rather than eye-movement behaviour, further demonstrating the tight but flexible coupling between the eyes and mind during reading.

About the Speaker:

Erik D. Reichle received a B.S. in psychology from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Since 2017, he has worked at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) where he is currently a Professor of Cognitive Psychology.  His research uses computer modelling, eye-tracking, and MEG experiments to understand the mental processes that support skilled reading and how those processes are influenced by languages and writing systems.  He has published more than 100 articles on these topics and has recently authored two books: Computational models of reading: A handbook in 2021, and The psychology of reading: Insights from Chinese in 2024.

Title:

Persecutory delusions are common and distressing psychotic symptoms that represent the extreme end of a paranoia continuum. Treatments for persecutory delusions require advancement. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying paranoia and persecutory delusions can help identify novel targets. In this talk, Dr. Sheffield will present background on the predictive coding model of delusions and evidentiary support for elevated volatility priors as a contributor to delusion severity. Dr. Sheffield will discuss the potential role of childhood trauma in increasing risk for paranoia via the elevation of volatility priors.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Sheffield is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Sheffield completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago, her PhD in clinical psychology at Washington University in St Louis, and her post-doctoral fellowship within the Vanderbilt Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Sheffield’s research focuses on identifying cognitive and psychological mechanisms underlying psychotic experiences using neuroimaging, behavioral, and clinical trials approaches. Dr. Sheffield’s research is funded through an R01 and K23 from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). Clinically, Dr. Sheffield is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in psychotherapy for individuals with psychosis, using a cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBTp) approach.

Title:

Mental health is not merely the absence of mental illness, but also the presence of optimal levels of functioning and well-being. From a positive psychology perspective, the study of mental health should not focus merely on addressing weaknesses, mending what is lacking, and understanding psychopathology, but also on fostering strengths, building the good life, and turning the average into great. In this seminar, I will present a series of research that demonstrate how a positive psychology approach can be adopted to provide a more holistic picture of mental health in various areas of psychology, including clinical, community, occupational, and educational contexts. In the clinical context, research on how adverse events can lead to not only posttraumatic stress disorder but also posttraumatic growth will be presented. In the community setting, research on how enhanced community quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic brought not only anxiety but also hope will be discussed. In the occupational context, I will present a strengths-based research on migrant domestic workers, in contrast to their usual portrayal as a marginalized working group and victims. Finally, in the educational context, I will talk about the importance of well-being to optimal teaching and learning. The implications of adopting a positive psychology approach to mental health research will be discussed.

Lecture: An Overview of Trauma- and Stressor-related Disorders (3:45-4:30pm)

This lecture intends to provide an overview of trauma- and stressor-related disorders, a group of psychological disorders that result from exposure to a traumatic or stressful event. The different disorders that fall under this category (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) will be described. Various models that explain their etiology will also be discussed.

About the Speaker:

Ma. Jenina N. Nalipay is currently a PhD candidate in Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a Registered Psychologist and also has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Santo Tomas, Philippines. She formerly worked at The Education University of Hong Kong, where she managed projects on positive psychology and education, as well as a project funded by the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme on the well-being of migrant domestic workers. As a practitioner, she has worked with children and adolescents who had experienced trauma. She has published more than 50 journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers in the fields of Clinical and Educational Psychology.

Registration:

Interested CUHK PSY faculty members and students please register at https://bit.ly/240419nalipay by 5pm, April 17th, 2024

Title:

Mental health is not merely the absence of mental illness, but also the presence of optimal levels of functioning and well-being. From a positive psychology perspective, the study of mental health should not focus merely on addressing weaknesses, mending what is lacking, and understanding psychopathology, but also on fostering strengths, building the good life, and turning the average into great. In this seminar, I will present a series of research that demonstrate how a positive psychology approach can be adopted to provide a more holistic picture of mental health in various areas of psychology, including clinical, community, occupational, and educational contexts. In the clinical context, research on how adverse events can lead to not only posttraumatic stress disorder but also posttraumatic growth will be presented. In the community setting, research on how enhanced community quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic brought not only anxiety but also hope will be discussed. In the occupational context, I will present a strengths-based research on migrant domestic workers, in contrast to their usual portrayal as a marginalized working group and victims. Finally, in the educational context, I will talk about the importance of well-being to optimal teaching and learning. The implications of adopting a positive psychology approach to mental health research will be discussed.

Lecture: Opening Space for New Stories: Introduction to Narrative Therapy (11:15-12:00nn)

We live our lives by the stories we tell about ourselves and that others tell about us. Our stories have the power to shape our perception of reality, influencing how we see, experience, and act in the world. In this lecture, you will learn about narrative therapy, a post-modern counselling approach that focuses on the power of stories in shaping our lives and influencing our well-being. You will get an overview of core principles, concepts and techniques of narrative therapy and how it can help us gain new perspectives, find strengths, and create positive change in our lives.

About the Speaker:

An Tong Gong is currently a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining CUHK, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hong Kong. She obtained her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London, where she had also received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Her research focuses on Autism Spectrum Disorder, trauma-related conditions, and their comorbidity and interventions. She is also a practising clinical psychologist working with clients of these studied presentations across Hong Kong SAR, UK, and Mainland China.

Registration:

Interested CUHK PSY faculty members and students please register at https://bit.ly/240418gong by 5pm, April 16th, 2024

Title:

Lecture: The intersection of obesity and eating disorders (3:45-4:30pm)

This lecture talks about how obesity and eating disorders are interconnected. I will focus on bulimic-spectrum eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder from the perspective of clinical psychology. Using a clinical vignette, I will explain how psychologists formulate disordered eating using cognitive behavioural theory. The goals of the lecture are to provide a basic understanding of what bulimic-spectrum eating disorders entail, and to apply psychological models to understand mental health conditions.

About the Speaker:

Registration:

Interested CUHK PSY faculty members and students please register at https://bit.ly/240412yim by 5pm, April 10th, 2024

Title:

Self-generated sensations typically feel less salient than externally-generated sensations – the fact that it is difficult to tickle oneself is a well-known example. Consistent with this phenomenon, it is now well-established that self-generated stimuli, such as the sound of one’s own voice, normally evoke less activity in the electroencephalogram (EEG) than physically identical stimuli that are externally-produced. There is growing evidence to suggest that people with schizophrenia exhibit abnormally low levels of ‘self-suppression’, which may account for their characteristic tendency to misattribute self-generated actions to external agents, such as seems to occur in delusions of control. In this talk I will review the behavioural and electrophysiological evidence for self-suppression deficits to self-generated actions in people with schizophrenia. I will then discuss how extending the idea from self-generated actions to self-generated thoughts – such as inner speech – could account for such characteristic psychotic symptoms as auditory-verbal hallucinations. I will conclude with some experimental data suggesting that people with schizophrenia may show self-suppression deficits to inner speech, and that these deficits may be linked to the presence of auditory-verbal hallucinations. 

About the Speaker:

Thomas Whitford is a Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. His research focuses on using electroencephalography and neuroimaging to explore the neural basis of schizophrenia. Thomas completed his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2007, before undertaking postdoctoral research positions at Harvard University (2008-2010) and the University of Melbourne (2010-2011). He joined UNSW as a faculty member in 2012. In 2014 he received the Young Tall Poppy Science Award from the Australian Institute of Policy and Science and in 2020 was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Australia.

Title:

Motor-based prediction in speech production and control

Exchanging information with the external world is a prerequisite for our survival, which necessitates specialized brain mechanisms that efficiently link action, perception, and cognitive systems. As in the context of speech -- the most complicated and important communicative behavior -- we hypothesize a motor-based prediction mechanism by which auditory consequences can be predicted in advance based on the programmed motor codes to optimally regulate speaking. Using electrophysiological (EEG, MEG, sEEG) and neuroimaging (fMRI) methods, we have demonstrated the neural network, dynamics, and functional specificity of the motor-based prediction mechanism that mediates basic speaking functions of the agency and online monitoring, as well as higher-order functions such as inner speech. Moreover, we tested the mechanism from a clinical perspective and revealed the relation between impaired motor-based prediction and auditory hallucinations. We further carried out studies that implicate the facilitation effects of motor-based prediction in speech and language learning. The novel research framework of motor-based prediction probes a canonical neural computation for normal cognitive functions in speech, as well as provides critical insights for mental disorders and pedagogical innovation.

About the Speaker:

Xing Tian, Associate professor of Neural and Cognitive sciences at NYU Shanghai. He holds a bachelor's degree in Physics from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from the University of Maryland, College Park. He uses electrophysiology and neuroimaging methods combined with behavioral measurement and computational modeling to study speech and language, sensorimotor integration, as well as higher-order cognitive functions such as learning, memory and mental imagery. He has published more than forty papers in the field of cognitive neuroscience, including Nature Human Behavior, Nature Neuroscience, Current Biology, PLOS Biology, Psychological Science, Cognition. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain and Language and Advances in Psychological Science (Chinese) and he was selected into the 2019 Young Yangtze Scholars Award Program of the Ministry of Education.

Title:

What happens after employees engage in voice behavior, defined as upward communication of suggestions or concerns intended to benefit the work unit or the organization? I answer this question by studying three inter-related areas: 1) communication tactics that enhance endorsement (defined as leaders’ acceptance and implementation of employees’ suggestions or concerns); 2) when and why endorsement would fail to motivate future voice behavior; and 3) the development of voice habit and its consequences on the voicing employees. I will present several published and ongoing research that seeks to expand our knowledge on post-voice outcomes in organizations.

About the Speaker:

Title:

Neurofeedback is a non-pharmacological treatment option that is best studied in ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) but is also used for other mental disorders. Feedback of selected neurophysiological markers of a disorder to patients is used to allow them training self-regulation to reduce these deviations linked to clinical symptoms.
I will present Neurofeedback study designs and findings, insights into specific and nonspecific mechanisms, and evidence from meta-analyses. The focus will be on EEG-based neurofeedback for ADHD, with a brief outlook on other functional imaging  modalities (fNIRS, fMRI) and other neurodevelopmental and affective disorders.

About the Speaker:

Title:

A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Human Memory Performance

About the Speaker:

https://webapp.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/ras/restricted/event?id=86509 (Deadline: 5pm, March 8th, 2024)

Title:

Introduction in EEG analysis using the software Brain Vision Analyzer: a two-hour workshop

In this workshop, I will give a hands-on introduction to the analysis of EEG data using the software Brain Vision Analyzer. I will guide participants through basic pre-processing steps, like filtering, re-referencing, artefact rejection, and calculating event-related potentials (ERP) for different conditions. We will also look at the use of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to reduce eye-movement-related artefacts. We will then calculate grand averages and t-tests. The workshop will highlight the strengths of this software that are data visualization across time (waveforms) and space (topographies) and that make it particularly suitable for beginners.

Attendees need to register (CUHK members only) and will later receive a link to install software and download exemplary data. Attendees need to bring their own laptop (Windows) and have installed the software and downloaded the data for the workshop.

About the Speaker:

https://webapp.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/ras/restricted/event?id=86196 (Deadline: 5pm, February 8th, 2024)

Title:

Good reading comprehension is generally accepted to be a key contributor to all-round scholastic attainment in primary schools globally. In most countries, once children have mastered the basic processes of decoding and word recognition, attention focuses on developing children’s ability to understand the meaning residing in various forms of text and using reading as a vehicle for the learning of subjects across the curriculum. Primary schools devote considerable time to ensuring that students are equipped with the skills necessary for successful reading, and teachers usually use a variety of techniques and practices to promote students’ independent reading competence. In this talk, Dr. Xiao will present her research on investigating cognitive-linguistic correlates of reading acquisition as well as instructional and affective factors (e.g., reading attitude and reading motivation) related to reading development among Chinese normally-developing and dyslexic children. She will then discuss the educational implications for her work and future research possibilities.       

About the Speaker:

https://webapp.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/ras/restricted/event?id=86195 (Deadline: 5pm, February 8th, 2024)

Title:

Over the course of literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings on a printed page. Yet, they do so differently across orthographies. One way to examine these cross-linguistic differences is through the lens of young bilingual children, who vary in their proficiency and experiences of learning to read in the two languages. Drawing from both behavioral and neuroimaging evidence from young Chinese-English, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals, in this talk, I will discuss my findings on how cross-linguistic and bilingual experiences shape child literacy development.

About the Speaker:

https://webapp.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/ras/restricted/event?id=86158 (Deadline: 5pm, February 5th, 2024)

Title:

Word reading, a process seemingly simple, is a complex skill. Learning to read is effortful and needs support of multiple cognitive-linguistic abilities. This reading acquisition process parallels a structural and functional change of the brain to process print. I will present a series of studies discussing the impact of literacy-specific experience and domain-general maturation on the development of word reading and its neural correlates. Using data from Hong Kong kindergarten children, I demonstrate a developmental pathway that children capitalize on their inborn cognitive and language abilities to develop the skill of actively reflecting on language structures and writing systems, which then serve as proximate precursors to word reading. Through analyzing data from developmental EEG studies, I argue that the development of N1 specialization to visual words is driven by an interaction between skill improvement and maturation. I will conclude by discussing how the findings inform literacy instruction and assessment. 

About the Speaker:

Title:

This presentation delves into the fascinating ways our brains use motor simulation and entrainment to enhance our understanding of speech and music. We begin with studies employing fMRI and TMS techniques to reveal how the speech motor cortex assists in making perceptual decisions about lexical tones and consonants, especially in challenging listening environments. The journey continues with experiments that combine eye-tracking and EEG, unveiling the intriguing phenomena of ‘eye tapping’ and ‘blink inhibition’ as key to rhythmic predictions in music listening. These revelations not only challenge our traditional views of neuroanatomical models for speech and music processing but also open new doors for therapeutic applications and the development of human-like speech recognition technologies. 

About the Speaker:

Title:

Korean Hangul is an alphabet, but it is also called an alphasyllabary. Korean language and script not only have the characteristics of English as an alphabet, but also the characteristics of Chinese. My talk will first review previous studies on language-universal and language-specific cognitive demands to learn the Korean script Hangul. Next, I like to introduce recent studies focusing on different cognitive strategies for various Korean language learners, including Korean kindergartners and Hong Kong Chinese adult learners as a foreign language, to read and write Korean words. Finally, I will present recent deaf studies on how Korean children with deaf and hard of hearing showed different reading and spelling strategies than their typical hearing peers.

About the Speaker:

  Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 28 Dec 2023)

Title:

Past theory and research have documented several stereotypes that explain why biases against Asians can occur, such as being seen as foreign and high achieving. In this talk, I will expand on past work by exploring a unique contributor to biases against Asians based on research on dehumanization and self-regulation. I propose that Asians have historically been viewed in the U.S. as like machines or robotics, indicating that they are subject to “mechanistic dehumanization.” My research team and I examined racial subgroup differences in mechanistic dehumanization in the U.S and how this dehumanization was linked to workplace mistreatments such as the lack of social support and exploitation. In addition, we explored perceived self-control as a predictor of mechanistic dehumanization. Together, these findings offer a unique perspective of biases against Asians, a novel link between the literature on dehumanization and self-regulation, and a timely reminder for people to see the humanity in others to build a more inclusive society. 

About the Speaker:

Title:

About the Speaker:

Title:

This study is the first to combine recent advances in the study of both the micro-structure of free-operant responding, and of neural activity, to explore novel theoretical predictions regarding voluntary actions on schedules of reinforcement. Two experiments utilised a multiple random ratio (RR) yoked random interval (RI) schedule of reinforcement versus externally triggered actions to explore the neural correlates of responses that potentially involve conscious (action) and unconscious (habitual) processes. A reduction in neural activity and variability prior to a response is taken to be associated with conscious actions. A modified leaky stochastic accumulator model, with additional access modulating the level of neural noise, was employed. Experiment I demonstrated that responses on RI schedules, especially when performance was approaching optimal with regard to reinforcement collection, were associated with decreased neural noise compared to a yoked externally-triggered response. Experiment II noted that neural noise decreased more following within-bout responses, which represent the ongoing state of behaviour, on both RR and RI schedules compared to before bout-initiation responding, which represent the beginning state of behaviour. This suggests that within-bout responses are more likely to be conscious goal-directed actions than bout-initiation responding. Taken together, these results suggest all schedules are comprised of conscious actions and involuntary habits, but that these are more associated with within-bout than bout-initiation responses, and more associated with strong goal-directed actions. This corroborates previous suggestions based on behavioural data, that only after a response bout has started do humans become aware of those responses and target them towards a goal.

About the Speaker:

Title:

Signal processing is a long-established discipline, with numerous research methods that have stood the test of time and are still in use today ( Fourier transfer, Wavelet transform etc.). Its application domains are incredibly diverse, spanning various industries including telecommunications, biochemistry, finance, and more. In many instances, such as during signal reconstruction, our pursuit is a high SNR ( in the sense of ?_2 Norm ). However, in some cases, while maintaining a focus on the SNR, we might be more interested in preserving or identifying the inherent characteristics of the signal itself, such as crucial information encapsulated in key points or the location of abrupt changes.

In this talk, we will introduce a novel signal analysis method. In this new approach, we model a single signal as a composition of multiple distinct characteristic signals from a morphological perspective. To elaborate, we will investigate the decomposition of signals into different components, with each component exhibiting a certain degree of sparsity in a specific differential domain. Through this, we can better decompose (or reconstruct) signals to retain vital information. We will demonstrate the feasibility and precision of this signal analysis approach using specific examples from the fields of biology (ECG) and chemistry (Chromatogram). Finally, we will attempt to apply this analysis method to the processing of fNIRS signals.

About the Speaker:

  Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 20 Nov 2023)

Title:

About the Speaker:

 Click here to watch the replay of the seminar (link valid until 6 Nov 2023)

Title:

Source Paper : Oyserman, D. & *Horowitz, E. (2023). From possible selves and future selves to current action: An integrative review and identity-based motivation synthesis. Advances in Motivation Science, 10, 73-147. ISSN 2215-0919 https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.adms.2022.11.003

People do hard things --things that seem from the outsider’s view to be impossibly hard. But they also often turn away from things that are even a bit hard, resulting in failures to progress on self-relevant goals. They have a laser-like focus on who they are and, at the same time, can be easily persuaded of the identity congruence of all manner of things. Identity-based motivation theory is a social psychological theory of goal pursuit and motivation that provides a predictive framework to understand why. I present the theory and supporting experimental evidence.

About the Speaker:

Title:

In Hong Kong, school is stressful for parents and children alike. On a daily basis, many parents struggle as they endeavor to support their children to meet the academic expectations from the school and ensure that their children are competitive in the education system, even as they strive to help their children enjoy a happy childhood. In this talk, I will describe a mobile app-based parenting program that I developed for local parents of school-aged children. I will present results from a randomized controlled trial that tested the effectiveness of the program in promoting positive parenting and parents’ well-being.

About the Speaker:

Click here for the seminar replay. Link will be valid until October 9th, 2023

Title:

This talk presents an accessible introduction to fNIRs, a cutting-edge neuroimaging method, for psychology students and researchers. Emphasizing fundamental concepts, signal analysis, and practical applications in psychological research, the session is tailored to accommodate attendees without prior knowledge. Through a few examples, we aim to demystify fNIRs, fostering an understanding of its potential in psychology. This talk is an opportunity for anyone interested in neuroimaging to gain a basic understanding of fNIRs.

About the Speaker:

    Click here for the seminar replay. Link will be valid until April 18th, 2023

Title:

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed human behaviors and posed a threat to globalism by spurring a resurgence of nationalism. This talk will give an overview of the theoretical framework of global orientations and its application in behavior, well-being, and intergroup relations. I will present our work using sequential explanatory mixed methods to examine the relationships between global orientations and the attitudes toward symbolic and instrumental integration policies. I will also present a multicultural project on global consciousness predicting prosocial behavior and national consciousness predicting defensive behavior in response to COVID-19. These findings provide implications for the study of global unity and cooperation.

About the Speaker:

   Click here for the seminar replay. Link will be valid until April 10th, 2023

Title:

Bilinguals seem to effortlessly choose which language they wish to speak, although studies show that both languages are always active even when bilinguals speak in monolingual contexts. I will present a series of studies on how bilinguals switch languages, thus revealing the mechanisms of bilingual language control. Specifically, I consider how bilinguals manage activation of cognates, which may pose special challenges to bilingual control mechanisms, because of overlap in form (e.g., lemon-檸檬). While cognates sometimes facilitate language switching, in other situations they make it more difficult for bilinguals to switch languages, an effect that is even stronger among patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This work reveals that language switching requires both specialized linguistic processes and domain-general cognitive abilities such as inhibition and monitoring. It also has implications for neuropsychological evaluation of bilinguals.

About the Speaker:

Title:

In this talk, I will present the arc of my current thinking about age similarities and differences in emotion regulation. Until recently, I argued that there might be substantial similarity among adult age groups in emotion regulation. But, we recently have conducted several studies that have added some nuance to my thinking. First, we have worked to distinguish emotion regulation strategies from tactics. There seem to be slight, but consistent age differences not in emotion regulation strategies but in tactics - how a strategy is implemented in a particular situation. Certain tactics are common across strategies; for example, some tactics involve upregulating positive aspects of situations, such as focusing on positive aspects of the environment or positive reappraisal, whereas others, such as distraction and detached reappraisal involve downregulating negativity. Second, we have considered concrete aspects of emotional contexts in more detail, such as how tactics vary as a function of objective and subjective situational characteristics and how their use changed during COVID-19. We also have tested specific effects of context on age-related positivity effects in attention by comparing eye tracking in the home to the lab: divergent patterns of age differences in the home as compared to the lab suggest the importance of context in this behavior as well. Together, recent findings have changed my thinking, so that I now believe there are small age differences in emotion regulation but perhaps larger effects of context; future work will continue to investigate specific dimensions of context that may be most important, as well as how to leverage these age and context effects to understand and perhaps intervene on emotion regulation difficulties in cognitively-impaired older adults.

About the Speaker:

 Click here for the seminar replay. Link will be valid until March 13th, 2023

Title:

Research and clinical innovations for young people's mental health have lagged far behind that in adults. Many researchers and clinicians are searching for the right 'recipe' to help, but the complexity of the issue means that we are unlikely to find a magical recipe. Our research group has a strong focus on identifying bio-psycho-social risk and resilience factors. In addition to conventional research studies, we have been piloting Citizen Science methods involving young people as active co-producers of research rather than passive recipients. Project Soothe has collected over 800 soothing photographs and engaged with citizen scientists from over 40 countries. We have also launched an app feature during COVID lockdown, co-curated a Pioneers in Practice: User Guide with a range of charity organisations, and more recently delivered workshops to over 200 children and young people and co-produced wellbeing tools with 9 teams of citizen scientists across schools and other youth groups. Our experience suggests that citizen science methodology offers an empowering experience for young people. More recently, we have also launched a Reading Resilience Network, building bridges between researchers and practitioners to advance our understanding of and intervention for young people’s mental health. We have further launched the Resilience Rucksack initiative, organising ‘Resilience Fairs’ in local schools. In this talk, I will share our findings and the working process of these projects with the audience and hope to inspire a lively discussion on mental health and service provision in which we can share experience between Hong Kong and the UK.

About the Speaker:

Click here for the seminar replay. Link will be valid until March 13th, 2023

Title:

Children’s literacy and mathematical competencies are a critical platform for their successful functioning as individuals in society. However, many children are at risk of not reaching sufficient competence levels; in particular those with low socioeconomic status backgrounds who may not receive the home support needed to develop to their full potential. Consequently, we are in need of intervention approaches that support young children’s mathematical and literacy competencies directly, so that they are ready to start school with the ability to learn adequately. In this presentation, I will provide information about children’s development in their home learning environment and discuss findings of (digital) intervention studies in the family context.

About the Speaker:

    Click here for the seminar replay. Link will be valid until March 7th, 2023.

Title:

Neuroimaging studies compare activation between conditions or groups to make inferences about brain processes. More activation is typically seen as increased sensitivity or engagement of a particular brain process. For example, less brain activation during reading in children with dyslexia would indicate a processing deficit. In some cases, however, less activation is interpreted as more efficient processing, such as in research on intelligence. In our previous research, we have shown that print tuning increases at the beginning of learning to read, but then decreases in later years, presumably reflecting newly emerging sensitivity for visual words in the beginning and more efficient processing later on. In this talk, I will present several recent EEG studies that look at facilitation effects in visual word processing that occur, after a word is repeated, primed, or visible in the parafoveal area. Facilitation may also explain differences between typically developing children and those with dyslexia in Chinese. Implications for neurobiological models of reading are discussed.

About the Speaker:

Title:

Imitation in human newborns is widely cited as evidence of an inborn Mirror Neuron System that underpins human social behaviour, even though its existence has been debated for decades. The possibility that newborns do not imitate was reinvigorated in recent years by research from our lab at the University of Queensland.  In this talk I will present original data from the largest-ever longitudinal study of newborn imitation and the first-ever meta-analysis.  I will also discuss international findings from infant EMG experiments which further challenge the claim that newborn humans can imitate.  All of this leads to alternative accounts of the development of imitation and its role in human sociality.

About the Speaker:

Title:

Why are some students striving to learn and carrying on their motivation? What makes students persistent? What are the critical reasons behind those phenomena? In this talk, I will introduce my recent work on curiosity and grit with the help of longitudinal design, meta-analysis, and network analysis. Particularly, how curiosity is distinct from the interest in facilitating motivation and learning; and why (recently) grit failed, and how to fix it. In sum, the findings highlight the critical roles of curiosity and grit in the motivational process and in achievement.

About the Speaker:

Many countries worldwide experience shifts in the age composition of their workforces. As the workforce ages and becomes increasingly age-diverse, it is critical to understand how aging and age differences in social interactions influence intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. In this talk, I present a series of research projects in which I investigate how knowledge transfer among age-diverse coworkers, self-affirmation after a job loss, and a positive uncertainty mindset contribute to enduring employment and successful aging at work (i.e., the ability and motivation to continue working). Grounded in the self-regulatory model of successful aging at work, the first project investigates how older employees’ knowledge seeking from younger coworkers affects their motivation and ability to continue working. I find that knowledge seeking from younger coworkers is a net contributor to successful aging at work. In the second project, I conducted two longitudinal experiments to examine the effects of a self-affirmation intervention on the reemployment success of individuals who lost their job. I find that engaging in self-affirmation increases the number of job offers and the probability and speed of reemployment. Importantly, the intervention was equally beneficial for individuals below and above the age of 50 years, suggesting that self-affirmation can be a useful means to help older individuals overcome job search challenges. In the third project, I develop and apply the concept of uncertainty mindsets. I find that a positive uncertainty mindset (i.e., recognizing opportunities in uncertainty) can explain unique variance in career planning and individuals’ occupational future time perspective above and beyond chronological age and other established predictors. Together, my research highlights individual and social strategies to promote successful aging at work.

Lecture: Job satisfaction: Why it’s important to keep your employees happy (10:45am-11:30am)

One of the enduring questions that bedevil managers is whether employee satisfaction, the degree to which people like their jobs, really matters. Is a satisfied employee a more productive employee? In this lecture, you will learn more about the definition, different facets, and measurements of job satisfaction. Moreover, you will get an overview of factors that influence job satisfaction and learn why job satisfaction is so important for employees and organizations. Keeping your employees happy, it turns out, is critical for many reasons.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Over the past decades, the development of advanced neuroimaging technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and electroencephalography (EEG), have enabled psychologists to explore a wide range of brain functions with more objective measures and expand our current understanding of the underlying mechanisms associated with a variety of typical and atypical human behaviors. In this talk, I will briefly introduce our recent work using functional brain imaging techniques to study the brain-behavior association in young girls with Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), a single-gene mutation brain disorder that stands as the most common cause of Autism. Moreover, I will present methods we have developed to enhance our ability to study brain dynamics with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Lecture: Birds Do It, Bees Do It, Even Human Beings Do It: The Neuroscience of Human Cooperation and communication (11:15am-12:00nn)

Human cooperation and communication is a key factor driving economic growth and social progress. In particular, group cooperation between two or more individuals can facilitate complex problem-solving and creativity. This type of social interaction has been recognized as one of the pivotal characteristics that fundamentally distinguish us from other species. In this lecture, I will briefly introduce the basic concepts of human interaction interaction, and what methods and brain imaging techniques can used for assessing human interaction (i.e., inter-brain synchrony). Finally, I will provide perspectives on the future research of this topic. I hope this lecture will inspire students a preliminary thought of what they can do with such methodology in psychological research.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Developmental dyslexia is a common learning disability affecting the acquisition of fluent reading skills despite normal intelligence and schooling. It is increasingly acknowledged as a genetically influenced disorder with a neurological basis, which in turn engenders cognitive deficits affecting the behavior of reading acquisition. In this talk, I will present my main works on the cognitive, neuroanatomical, and genetic determinants of developmental dyslexia published during the past five years. Moreover, I will also present some of our recent findings regarding how environmental factors influence reading skills and moderate neural and genetic underpinnings of reading dis/ability. These studies lead to our future research on imaging genetics of developmental dyslexia with an interdisciplinary approach.

Lecture: Memory (3:45pm-4:30pm)

What is memory? How do we form memories? How do we retrieve memories? Why does memory sometimes fail us? In this lecture, I will give answers for all these questions.  The goals of this lecture are to elucidate the definition of memory, explain the characteristics of different kinds of memory, discuss various explanations for forgetting, discuss how and why memories change over time, describe and explain the brain structures and regions that are the bases for memory, and explain the special types of memory: autobiographical memory, flashbulb memories, eyewitness testimony.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Title:

In this talk, I will review the development of photobiomodulation, and its recent application to cognitive disorders.  I will also talk about our studies examining the fundamental mechanism of this type of brain stimulation and its application to older adults with mild cognitive impairments. 

About the Speaker:

Title:

In this study, 3-dimensional (3-D) enhanced brain-function-map generation and estimation methodology is presented. Optical signals were modelled in the form of numerical optimization problem to infer the best existing waveform of canonical hemodynamic response function. Inter-channel activity patterns were also estimated. The estimation of activation of inter-channel gap depends on the minimization of generalized cross-validation. 3-D brain activation maps were produced through inverse discrete cosine transform. The proposed algorithm acquired significant results for 3-D functional maps with high resolution, in comparison with that of 2-D functional t-maps. A comprehensive analysis by exhibiting images corresponding to several layers has also been appended.

About the Speaker:

Title:

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a non-invasive optical imaging technique to measure cerebral hemodynamics has seen rapid development and increasing use in studying the human brain. fNIRS measures relative changes of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin in the local tissues as a surrogate measurement of neuronal activity, similar to the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which is the current golden standard of functional neuroimaging. Compared with fMRI, fNIRS offers competitive advantages, including low cost, portability, and compatibility with medical electronic devices implanted in patients. However, fNIRS has its limitations and faces several challenges. To facilitate the achievement of fNIRS’s tremendous potential in research and clinical applications, my Ph.D. work aimed to tackle several methodological challenges, mainly regarding preprocessing, cross-modal validation with fMRI, and control of movement-related artifacts. The outcomes of my research work have made significant advancements in paving the pathway for using fNIRS as a broadly accessible and noninvasive neuroimaging technique in various clinical applications, such as measuring auditory response in cochlear implant users, mapping resting-state functional connectivity, and monitoring the deterioration of the brain function in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease. The portable and accessible fNIRS will become a powerful tool complementary to fMRI for purposes such as home-based imaging for remote patient monitoring and long-lasting recordings for studying the sleep stages.

About the Speaker:

Title:

Dementia is traditionally understood from a deficit-based approach, focusing on the presence and management of cognitive impairment and behavioSocial Wofural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). More recently, person-centred care and positive psychology concepts have been introduced to understand the experience of living with dementia, acknowledging the importance of maintaining and enhancing well-being in people with dementia. In this seminar, I will present my research journey from identifying the pattern of BPSD across dementia stages to exploring Hong Kong dementia carers’ understanding and response to BPSD. Its implications for future research on positive psychology in the growing Chinese dementia population will also be discussed.

About the Speaker:

Click here for the seminar replay (Link valid until November 28th, 2022) 

Title:

Executive control is a diverse group of functions that play an important role in many situations. In recent studies we have explored a new paradigm, the face emotion Stroop task that measures the inhibition component of executive control in social contexts. In this new paradigm emotional facial expressions have to be executed to a verbal prompt vis a vis congruent and incongruent background images. The response latencies and accuracies are quantified frame by frame by a machine classifier. We have explored the fruitfulness of this paradigm in mothers and non-mothers vis a vis pictures of angry and happy infants and adults and in adolescents with different amounts of adverse childhood experiences and different degrees of violent behavior. In all these studies the face emotion Stroop has proven sensitive to social factors and in the case of violent behaviour may be more sensitive than the classic colour Stroop test. Therefore we suggest that the face emotion Stroop task may be a suitable instrument to measure inhibition in emotionally loaded social situations.

About the Speaker:

Title:

This study examined the gender differences in the main and interactive effects of subjective social status and area deprivation on mental health among older adults in Hong Kong. Data for this study came from the baseline of MrOs and MsOs studies, including 4000 Chinese men and women ≥ 65 in Hong Kong. Our results reaffirm that subjective social status is an independent indicator of health after adjusting for objective SES measures. Although area-level social deprivation was not significantly associated with the health of older people, it may moderate the effect of subjective social status on health. Women with a lower perceived status in the community were more likely to experience depressive symptoms when living in more deprived neighborhoods. The findings suggested that subjective social status provides important information for mental health of the older population. Policymakers may implement interventions to enhance the subjective social status of older adults. 

About the Speaker:

Title:

The role of parents and caregivers in children’s early language and literacy development is undeniable. Through our research with children and families from different societies, we have examined how parental influences can be transmitted to children’s outcomes and whether their developmental dynamics are comparable across different family contexts. In this seminar, I will present some of our recent studies on the environmental correlates of early language and literacy development. A particular focus will be placed on the mediating and moderating factors in the associations between parental factors and children’s skills. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings will be discussed.

About the Speaker:

 Original picture books mentioned in the talk

Title:

“Virtual Exchange (VE) is a technology facilitated pedagogy that offers students the opportunity to interact in substantial ways, either synchronously or asynchronously, with peers in other parts of the world, while engaging in disciplinary focused work. Instructors at two partner institutions, in different parts of the world, agree on a set of learning outcomes and learning activities to engage students in collaborative work, embedded in a multicultural setting” (Continuing and Professional Education, DePaul University). This seminar is to share the teaching and learning experience involving VE in the elective undergraduate course of Human Development and Education in Cultural Contexts in Term 2, 2021-22 at the Department of Psychology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

About the Speaker:

Title:

How children understand the concepts of teaching and learning is associated with their developing theory of mind, the ability to attribute desire, belief, intention, emotion, and knowledge, to self and others. In three empirical studies, I will introduce a set of purposefully designed tasks to assess children’s teaching and learning comprehension, a psychometrically validated scale of the Preschool Teaching and Learning Comprehension Index (PTLCI), and a new theory of mind training study to enhance children’s teaching and learning comprehension through shared picture book reading. I will also debut a set of research-based original picture books in Chinese for training purpose.

About the Speaker:

Title:

About six years ago, the Department established a new concentration area in its undergraduate programme, Guided Self-help, drawing on then a new form of psychological intervention, Low-intensity Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (LiCBT). It is an adapted form of CBT designed for delivery by graduates with only a Bachelor's degree, frequently in psychology. It differs from the traditional CBT which is delivered by fully trained clinical psychologists with at least a Master's or doctoral degree. Research in UK and Australia has documented promising evidence for the effectiveness of the LiCBT, while it has the inherent advantages of being cost-saving and thus increasing accessibility of psychological intervention to the community. This is the background which leads the Department to establish the new concentration area. Yet, one important question remains: Does LiCBT deliver its promises when practiced in Hong Kong? This talk is going to present data from two local cohorts of clients receiving LiCBT, the first cohort involving 300+ clients while the second cohort 1,000+ clients. Besides post-treatment outcomes, follow-up data are also available from the second cohort. It is high time that the Department examines whether its education delivers.

About the Speaker:

The frontal lobes are the executive centers of the brain. Compared with the rest of the brain, these regions are the last to reach full maturity but are the first to undergo deterioration with aging. Clarifying how frontal lobe functions change throughout the lifespan, both typically and atypically, can give us invaluable insights into alterations in higher-order cognitive functions over time. In this talk, I will be presenting on my work with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) that addresses the development and aging of frontal lobe functions. Specifically, I will highlight fNIRS evidence that informs neurocognitive development and aging in healthy individuals, and that demonstrates associations between frontal lobe dysfunction and cognitive impairment in autism spectrum disorder and mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Research implications and future research directions will be discussed.

Understanding functions of the frontal lobes and associated networks (11:45am-12:30pm)

The frontal lobes are known to be involved in a variety of cognitive functions. In this lecture, I will introduce several models that have been proposed to explain functions of the frontal lobes and associated networks. These models, which are based on different theoretical perspectives and research methodologies, will be compared and contrasted. The implications of these models will also be mentioned.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is often viewed as a largely technical, practical, and industry-centered field of study focusing on the usability and design aspects of technological products or services. Although that is partly true, HCI is really a psychological, social, and ethical integration that requires theoretical thinking of why and how humans interact with technology in certain ways. This talk will give an overview of how Ki Joon Kim, as a transdisciplinary HCI scholar, utilizes a multitude of theories not only from his home fields of HCI and communication, but also from the disciplines of design, engineering, psychology, and sociology, to synthesize broad theoretical lenses for examining the use and effect of the latest emerging technologies, including the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, and social robots.

Lecture: Defining and Assessing Interactivity: How Interactive Media Shape Our Psychology (11:45am - 12:30pm)

What does it mean to be interactive, how do we measure interactivity, and how does interactivity affect our psychology? We are all familiar with the term “interactivity” or “interactive media,” but answering these questions can be difficult for many of us because there exist multidimensional and cross-disciplinary views on interactivity. This lecture will provide a quick overview of how interactivity is defined and assessed in the field of communication and explore how interactive communication technology influences user psychology.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is often viewed as a largely technical, practical, and industry-centered field of study focusing on the usability and design aspects of technological products or services. Although that is partly true, HCI is really a psychological, social, and ethical integration that requires theoretical thinking of why and how humans interact with technology in certain ways. This talk will give an overview of how Ki Joon Kim, as a transdisciplinary HCI scholar, utilizes a multitude of theories not only from his home fields of HCI and communication, but also from the disciplines of design, engineering, psychology, and sociology, to synthesize broad theoretical lenses for examining the use and effect of the latest emerging technologies, including the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, and social robots.

Lecture: Defining and Assessing Interactivity: How Interactive Media Shape Our Psychology (11:45am - 12:30pm)

What does it mean to be interactive, how do we measure interactivity, and how does interactivity affect our psychology? We are all familiar with the term “interactivity” or “interactive media,” but answering these questions can be difficult for many of us because there exist multidimensional and cross-disciplinary views on interactivity. This lecture will provide a quick overview of how interactivity is defined and assessed in the field of communication and explore how interactive communication technology influences user psychology.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Current social science research has constantly highlighted the significance of understanding the human factor within virtual ecology. The emergence of Metaverse, AI, XR and other virtual technologies provide researchers with an opportunity to study the human-computer experience (HCE) for diverse research purposes. This research seminar is going to share some of my previous investigations and findings about studying user experiences in XR from various perspectives. My studies had covered the use of XR in the areas of social science, business, organizational studies, education, and most significantly in design thinking and creativity education. This seminar is also trying to explore the future research domains on HCE in response to the rapid change of digital landscape and technologies.

Lecture: The Virtual Ecology: Virtuality, Mobility & Share -- The Future Challenges to User-Computer Experiences (11:45am - 12:30pm)

The entire virtual ecology has much bigger and complicated then what we think that overturns the ways of human interactions and user-computer experiences. As the “Metaverse” concept is starting to incorporate Web3 technology enabled through blockchain technology, this virtual platform is expected to play a huge role in re-shaping the virtual landscape as well as human interactions. Thus, this introductory online lecture is going to provide audiences with a clear picture of what virtual ecology is, and its attributes as well as the future challenges to human-computer experiences.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

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Privacy helps to regulate both interpersonal interactions and intrapersonal states. As adolescence is a sensitive period for both social relationship and self-regulation development, it is perhaps not surprising that many family conflicts involve disagreements about the limits and value of young people’s privacy. This colloquium examines whether adolescents’ experiences of privacy invasion are associated with problems in interpersonal and intrapersonal functioning, devoting special attention to difficulties in family communication and youth emotion regulation. Incorporating data from both Eastern and Western contexts, this talk will also address whether the regulatory functions of adolescent privacy transcend cultural differences in family power structures and interpersonal boundary construction.

About the Speaker:

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Characterised by involuntary and intense love-hate dynamics, sibling relationships can be impactful: Siblings can shape child development directly, by being warm and conflictual with each other. Siblings can also shape child development indirectly, by allowing parental differential treatment to happen in the family. Interestingly, few studies have been conducted on sibling relationships in Asia—a region well-known for its strong emphasis on the family. In this talk, the speaker will talk about how longitudinal data collected on two siblings from each of 200 Chinese families could be used to explore the contribution of sibling relationships to child adjustment. 

About the Speaker:

Gender Studies Programme and Department of Psychology (by courtesy), CUHK

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Gender is an important factor in human development. In children, behavioral gender expressions can be found in occupational aspirations, appearance, play and activities, and traits. While traditional theories and studies have attempted to explain normative gender development, there is increasing recognition of diversity in gender expression, coupled with increasing reports of gender dysphoria and gender nonconformity in the West. This seminar will present findings on children’s appraisals of gender nonconformity and new data on prevalence of childhood gender nonconformity and its mental health correlates in a Chinese community sample. Discussion will focus on how these findings compare to known patterns in Western cultures, as well as the potential to drive forward research on gender nonconformity and apply a screening tool for gender dysphoria in Chinese communities.

About the Speaker:

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Recent studies have suggested a strong relation between spatial ability and mathematical problem-solving, but we have less knowledge about why this is the case. In this talk, I will demonstrate three possible mechanisms that may explain the relation between spatial ability and mathematical problem-solving, and they are the representation of numerical magnitude (i.e., knowing what numbers represent), the understanding of arithmetic operation (i.e., knowing how +, -, × and ÷ work), and the conversion from word problems to numerical expressions. I will also report a study that provides empirical support to all three pathways. Potential theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

About the Speaker:

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This presentation highlights the bidirectional relationship between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and behavioural and psychological factors. Most of the risk-factors are behavioural, and after a CVD event the challenges for rehabilitation and secondary prevention are to a large extent behavioural and psychological. To investigate how emotional distress affects risk-factor management and survival, and to identify patients at risk for emotional distress after a myocardial infarction (MI), large national quality registers were utilized. The results will be presented and discussed. As will results from clinical trials investigating interned-based psychological treatments for MI patients experiencing emotional distress. A certain focus will be put on the specific challenges of internet interventions.

About the Speaker:

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In recent years, more researchers have become aware of the unique characteristics of online communication that promote deindividuation. As a result, some researchers argue that automatic processes play a more significant role in cyberbullying than controlled processes, but findings on the role of automatic processes remain mixed. In this seminar, I will present an overview of my research on the automatic processes (fun and thrill) and controlled processes (moral disengagement and normative beliefs) in cyberbullying with a focus on how the interaction between online and offline factors may explain individual and group differences (age and cross-cultural differences) in cyberbullying. The role of psychosocial development in human-computer interactions will be highlighted. Implications on how a systematic account for online and offline factors in cyberbullying can fill gaps in current research and intervention designs will be drawn.

About the Speaker:

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Chinese has long been considered a difficult second language, due to its unique and complex writing system. Differing from alphabetic languages, Chinese is morpho-syllabic, having Chinese characters as its basic units. A fluent Chinese reader and writer must acquire a rich repertoire of Chinese characters and be well versed in these orthographic characteristics. This is a hurdle for Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners and, henceforth, developing literacy skills has been a major concern in CSL education. This is also true for the ethnic minority children who are learning CSL in Hong Kong. They find acquiring literacy skills a difficulty, and its implications for their academic advancement and social integration have aroused much social concern. In this seminar, I will present the findings of my studies on the students’ CSL literacy acquisition and development, covering topics such as influences of metalinguistic awareness on character reading and spelling, role of decoding played in reading comprehension, and reading–writing relationship. I will argue that, for the young CSL learners, acquiring a good Chinese orthographic knowledge is crucial for their literacy development.

About the Speaker:

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A strong preference for fair skin appears to be the norm across the Asian continent and may pervade many aspects of social life. Yet scholarly work on this ubiquitous phenomenon is (a) rare within psychological science, and (b) predominantly treats it as situated only within the individual, abstracted from the social context. In this talk, I argue that colorism has firm systemic roots as a result of the sociohistorical trajectories of different Asian societies that have attached cultural meanings to skin color. Consequently, similarities and differences in such trajectories may account for variability in the expression of colorism within contemporary Asian societies.

About the Speaker:

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Humans, like many other social animals, naturally engage in friendly physical contact with conspecifics. Research suggests such contact has a number of regulatory effects concerning, for example, internal bodily processes as in the context of stress and the way we relate and bond with others. As such physical contact may be compared to essentials like food and water for which consumption excites pleasure, which in turn drives the consumatory behavior. Our current understanding of the somatosensory system links the pleasure arising from physical contact to a specific mechanoreceptor called the C-tactile afferent. In this talk, I will introduce this receptor and detail work conducted by others and my own group elucidating receptor properties, central-nervous system projections, and modulatory effects on brain structure and function. Moreover, I will compare and contrast the C-tactile afferent with other mechanoreceptors asking to what extent its processes are especially relevant for keeping us “in touch” with each other.

About the Speaker:

Click here to replay the seminar (link valid until April 27th, 2021)

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In social science research, the analysis of moderation, mediation, and conditional process (models that combine both mediation and moderation processes) has become increasingly popular.  These models are important because they allow researchers to understand, describe, and explain complex social phenomenon and human behavior in a more accurate way.  Traditionally, conditional process models are analyzed by the regression-based approach.  This approach, however, does not provide the goodness-of-fit test and therefore there is no way to tell if a hypothesized model fits the data adequately.  In this seminar, a structural equation modeling (SEM)-based approach is proposed as an alternative.  In addition, I will introduce the VS, a computer software program that implements the proposed SEM approach for conditional process analysis.

About the Speaker:

Psychologists have provided abundant evidence demonstrating individual variations in cognition and social behaviors across the human lifespan. Two important sources of individual differences in cognition are age and socio-cultural environment, each of which has been closely investigated. With increased age, adults show declined performance in many neurocognitive domains, including memory, spatial navigation, and inhibitory control. With respect to socio-cultural environment, there are considerable individual variations in the way people process contextual information, including attention, motivation, and self-presentation. The interaction between age and environment provides various implications for psychological researches as age represents the effect of biological processes whereas environment represents the effect of sustaining experiences. In this talk, I will review the different research lines and interdisciplinary approaches we are carrying out in the lab to understand how cognitive functions and social behavior change and adapt as we age in different socio-cultural settings on the behavioral and neural levels. Despite age-related declines in behavior and cognition were reported as a dominant picture of the aging mind, our compelling evidence from cognitive and social neuroscience of aging are stimulating new hypotheses and provide a more integrative view of the aging mind.

Lecture: Aging Gracefully: The Contribution of Psychology (3:45pm - 4:30pm)

Biological aging faces the potential storm of physiological and psychological deterioration that can heavily impact individuals’ ability to perform everyday cognition and behavior. While there is a large amount of work on age-related neurodegenerative and mental disorders, it is often conceptualized from the genetic, biochemical, and clinical perspectives, and less from the cognitive, psychological, and social sides. This one-sided depiction of aging limits how a society views the healthy aging process, and limits the elderly’s maintenance of vital components for staying active and aging gracefully. This lecture will provide an introductory overview of how the psychology of aging contributes to promote mental health, improve neurocognitive vitality, and enhance positive emotional functioning. I hope this lecture will provide students a psychological view of the healthy aging mind, thus helping develop the sustainable age-friendly communities in Hong Kong.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Neural specialization is characterized by increased neural activity for relevant tasks and decreased neural activity for irrelevant tasks. The brain becomes more specialized during the acquisition of expertise. I study neural specialization in the case of reading acquisition and development. I will show evidence of neural specialization from cross-linguistic comparisons of reading development, and second language learning, as well as altered neural specialization in reading disability. Future research is sorely needed to understand how neural specialization and learning can be facilitated.

Lecture: Introduction to Developmental Neurological Disorders (11:45am - 12:30pm)

In this undergraduate level lecture, I will introduce developmental cognitive disorders (DCD), including essential characteristics of DCD, the relationship between genes, brain and behaviors in DCD, etc. I will also discuss one type of DCD in more detail, namely, developmental dyslexia. I will introduce its definition, its diagnosis and interventions, as well as what we need to study about developmental dyslexia.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

Conventional wisdom in education states that the best way to enhance learning is to provide additional study opportunities and that the role of tests is merely to measure what has been learned during study. Although assessment is certainly one function of testing, the importance of testing, per se, for improving learning has received greater attention of late. While researchers have conducted numerous studies to understand the nature of the testing effect, there has been far less research investigating the neural mechanisms underlying this effect and it is less clear how to maximize the effect of testing and expand the benefits to non-tested but related information. The goal of this talk is to shed light on these questions by examining the key factors that define the boundary of the testing effect. In particular, empirical experiments and computational models will be reported to address the issue of what it is about attempting to retrieve the answer from memory that enhances learning more than study.

Lecture: The mechanisms of memory and what affects it (11:45am - 12:30pm)

Other than that which is genetically coded, everything we know is derived from and reflects memory for our past experiences. Memory is at the heart of virtually all other psychological processes and behaviors, from the ability to temporarily remember a phone number or where you placed your keys to the acquisition of language and the ability to reason. This lecture will provide an introductory overview of classic and current issues in human memory, examining how people acquire, retrieve, and use information. After this lecture, you will probably forget more than 90% of the theories, experiments, and names presented to you, but hopefully you will think more critically about memory in your everyday lives.

~ All CUHK PSY faculty members and students are welcome ~

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In the past decades, numerous research studies have proliferated in studying the effects of mindfulness on well-being. Although secularized, mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, which has a web of interrelated constructs in explaining the human condition and ways to improve well-being. The presentation will share some of the efforts of our lab in conceptualizing and empirically investigating the effects of Buddhism-derived constructs (i.e., interconnectedness, stillness) on both individual (e.g., mental health) and collective (e.g., social justice) well-being.

About the Speaker:

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The relationship between handedness and language/cognitive abilities is a controversial topic. Despite the popular belief that left-handers are more intelligent and have cognitive benefits, many studies failed to find the difference or reported opposite findings. The study to be shared in this seminar will try to dispel some of the myths by addressing four research questions related to handedness in Hong Kong school-aged children, including: 1) What is the prevalence of left-handed children in Hong Kong? 2) Is handedness heritable and what is its heritability in Chinese? 3) Is there an association between hand preference and children’s language abilities? (4) Does handedness skill predict children’s reading and mathematical performance?

About the Speaker:

Worldwide, social and political issues have brought along numerous questions and challenges, and Hong Kong is no exception. In this seminar, I will discuss findings from our recent research on psychological factors associated with Hong Kong people’s attitudes toward issues such as wealth inequality and unemployment and their potential consequences. Conceptual and applied implications of the findings will also be presented.

 Click here to replay the seminar (link valid until November 24th, 2020)

Adolescence as a distinct developmental stage receives much attention from both the academic community and the general public. Culturally shaped conceptions of adolescence not only are widely held by individuals in a given society, but also have notable implications for youth’s functioning as they navigate the teen years. This seminar presents findings from a short-term longitudinal study with early adolescents in Hong Kong and Chongqing (an inland metropolis in the Mainland of China) that show in the two regions: 1) mean-level differences in conceptions of adolescence held by youth, and 2) relation-level similarities in reciprocal pathways between youth’s conceptions and their socioemotional functioning

In the past few decades, digital technologies have accelerated research interest within the field of psychology. This seminar will provide an overview of currently available technological developments, primarily, wearable devices which continuously monitor physical and physiological changes (e.g., activity, sleep, and heart rate variability) outside laboratory settings, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) which collects real-time data from current states and behaviours within natural environments. Furthermore, a practical guide to usage and implementation in behavioural and mental health research will be provided.

Arts has various benefits beyond a form of entertainment, yet arts participation remains low. “Not understanding art” has been a prevalent barrier to arts participation. Past studies have examined various methods to enhance cognitive understanding to enhance interest in arts. This seminar examines if cognitive understanding could be conceptualized differently. Results on appreciation of visual arts, music, dance and drama will be presented to suggest if misunderstanding, amateurish understanding, or purposefully not understanding could enhance art experience..

Does culture moderate the relations between cognitive skills and children’s academic achievement? To what extent the relation between home environment and academic achievement appears to be similar across languages and cultures? In this seminar, I will present my recent research on the cognitive and environmental correlates of academic achievement (literacy and numeracy) across diverse languages and cultures. A particular focus will be placed on a longitudinal study contrasting literacy acquisition in two logographic orthographies in East Asian contexts, Chinese and Japanese. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings will be discussed.

Well-being theorists have long debated whether human flourishing is achievable through deriving pleasure (hedonism) or achieving purpose in life and personal growth (eudemonism). Flow is a subjective state characterized by intense engagement, concentration, and enjoyment, and it is considered to be an optimal experience that fits both the hedonic and eudemonic paradigms. In this seminar, I will present my work regarding the situational and dispositional antecedents as well as the outcomes of flow. I will also present my newest findings on meaningful engagement and its association with psychological well-being in multiple settings.

~ CUHK PSY/GLSD PG students and faculty members are welcome ~

Amid the global pandemic of COVID-19, will the world be happier in 2020? While it is nearly impossible to make precise forecasts about the future, psychologists and social scientists have conducted ample research on societal well-being in different countries. In this lecture, I will introduce the importance of population well-being to society and the relationship between money and well-being at the national and individual levels. Using classical and contemporary psychological theories, I will demonstrate how various societal factors, such as income inequality and social unrest, are associated with well-being. This lecture will end with a discussion on the happiness levels of Hong Kong people and what we can do to promote population well-being.

~ CUHK PSY/GLSD students and staff are welcome ~

Research studies have found how various personal factors (e.g., gender, political orientation, values) relate to people’s concerns for environmental issues and their support for environmental protection. However, most of these studies overlooked the influence of the broader socioecological contexts (e.g., culture, economic condition, quality of governance) on these individual processes, which limits the understanding and promotion of environmentalism– a global issue that involves diverse populations. We address this limitation by investigating how societal-level factors influence individual processes in shaping environmentalism. This seminar will showcase our studies that use this approach to advance the understanding of environmental concern and behavior, and discuss how to apply this approach to address other global issues in the future.

~ CUHK PSY/GLSD PG students and faculty members are welcome ~

The threat of global climate change becomes more pressing when time goes by. Climate change mitigation necessitates people’s willingness to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle (e.g., eat less meat, reduce car travel). In this lecture, I will talk about how psychology contributes to addressing climate change mitigation through understanding biases in the human mind and behavior.   

~ CUHK PSY/GLSD students and staff are welcome ~

Compared to the rest of the brain, the frontal lobe is the last to reach full maturity but is the first to undergo deterioration with aging. Finding out how frontal lobe functions change with development and aging would thus give us invaluable insights into changes in cognition over time. In this talk, I will present on the application of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study the development and aging of frontal lobe functions. First, I will review its application in research on healthy development and aging. I will then highlight how the application of fNIRS has enhanced our mechanistic understanding of some developmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, and aging-related diseases, including mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Finally, the potential utility of fNIRS in the rehabilitation of people with developmental and aging-related diseases will be discussed.

~ CUHK PSY PG students and staff are welcome ~

The frontal lobe has been considered as the central executive of the brain and controls important cognitive skills in humans. In this lecture, I will first introduce several methods that scientists frequently use to study functions of the human frontal lobe. Then I will talk about the role of the frontal lobe in various cognitive abilities, such as executive function and decision-making. Finally, I will present several ways that one can do to maintain or improve their frontal lobe functions.

~ CUHK PSY students and staff are welcome ~

The pervasiveness of irrational decision-making in almost every area of human endeavor highlights the importance of understanding the neurobiological and computational basis of reward-based decision-making. Contradicting with utility maximization principles, our research has shown that choices are susceptible to influences from exogenous and endogenous contexts. Using neuroeconomic methods, we demonstrate that the striatum and vmPFC seem to encode decision parameters in a context-dependent fashion, which may explain a range of decision biases. I will also showcase our findings in the application of neuroeconomics to the study of aging and psychiatry disorders.

~ CUHK PSY PG students and staff are welcome ~

It may come as a surprise the first time parents hear their child lying. Learning how to lie is actually a critical part of a child’s development. In this lecture, I will talk about the emergence of lying in very young children and how children progressively learn to tell good lies. We will also discuss what caregivers/educators can do about children’s dishonesty.

~ CUHK PSY students and staff are welcome ~

Personal goals change across adulthood: People primarily focus on goals towards striving for growth/gains (e.g., acquiring new knowledge and skills) in early adulthood, but increasingly focus more on goals towards maintenance (e.g., maintaining emotional satisfaction) and loss avoidance (e.g., avoiding health problems) in late adulthood. In this seminar, I will present my research on why such changes occur (antecedents) and how the changes influence people’s cognitive processes, social behaviors, and well-being (consequences).

~ CUHK PSY PG students and staff are welcome ~

This lecture is envisaged being part of a Psychology of Aging or Developmental Psychology course targeting undergraduate students. In this lecture, I will spend 30 minutes introducing emotional/ psychological well-being and common mental health problems of older adults. The following will be a 30-minute discussion about this topic among all attendees.

~ CUHK PSY students and staff are welcome ~

In close relationships, conflict is inevitable such that relationship partners have to work on the balance between their needs and their relationship’s interests.  To manage conflict situations, individuals may ideally want to show responsiveness to the partner’s needs and stay calm. These outcomes can often be achieved via the joint efforts of both partners. In this presentation, I will present my works about the dyadic processes involved in communication of responsiveness and emotion regulation during conflict resolution.

With electroencephalogram (EEG) data, we often adopt event-related potential (ERP) analysis, i.e., averaging the activation across the trials of a condition for a certain channel or group of channels. When an ERP component reveals higher activation for one condition over another, a question arises as to what this means. For example, does higher activation mean more engagement of the brain, or does it mean less efficient processing? In the past 15 years, multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of neuroimaging data has shown that the variation of activation across brain recording locations and time can reveal more information than traditional univariate analysis. However, compared with studies using fMRI, it is much less common for EEG studies to adopt MVPA. In this talk I will give a conceptual introduction of multivariate analysis of neuroimaging data, and share our recent experience in using this technique in three EEG studies of perception. These studies involved different modalities (visual and auditory), participants (novices and experts of a domain), and data specifics (e.g., 20-128 channels). I will discuss how MVPA helps inform object recognition in these studies, and also the strengths and weaknesses of the technique.

Fast and accurate processing of faces (person identity, emotion, eye gaze, speech movements, gender, attractiveness) is essential for human communication and interaction. During the last 10 years my colleagues and I have studied differences between persons and the underlying neural mechanisms in a number of large-scale experiments. I will first summarize our results about the cognitive structure of face cognition and whether it is affected by age and gender. Then I will report our research on the neural mechanisms of individual differences in face cognition, as reflected in event-related brain potentials.