Quentin Zhen QIN 秦震 Ph.D.

Principal Investigator

hmzqin@ust.hk; CV

Personal Website

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6117-7809

Quentin Qin is an Associate Professor with substantiation in the Division of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also Associate Director of Center for Language, Cognition and Technology, and a faculty associate of Center for Aging Science, HKUST. He got his Ph.D degree in Linguistics from the Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas. Prior to joining the faculty at HKUST, he worked as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Center for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Zhongxuan MAO 毛钟旋 (BA: NJUST)

Lab Manager & Research Assistant

hmzxmao@ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9896-7726

Zhongxuan holds a BA in Linguistics from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. She is interested in age-related changes in Mandarin lexical tone production and perception. Her previous work examined how aging affects the acoustic properties and distinctiveness of Mandarin lexical tones. Currently, she is involved in projects investigating older adults’ categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones and the potential benefits of auditory training for age-related changes in speech perception.

Jeremy, Yin To CHUI 徐彥韜 (BA: CUHK; MA: PolyU; MPhil: UST)

Ph.D Student (HKPFS awardee)

ytchuiac@connect.ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2169-086X

Jeremy graduated with an MA degree in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language from HK PolyU. He is interested in speech perception as well as the cognitive and computational mechanisms behind perceptual learning. Currently, he is working on whether, and to what extent, younger and older adults make statistical inferences (e.g., distributional information, word-referent co-occurrences) in the implicit perceptual learning L2 lexical tone categories. His previous MPhil project studied the statistical learning of Mandarin lexical tones and how individual differences played a role in learning. Jeremy's Ph.D study is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.

Yuqi WANG 王宇琪 (BA: Tianjin U; MPhil: UST)

Ph.D Student (HKPFS awardee)

ywangqi@connect.ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1794-9747

Yuqi graduated from Tianjin University with a BA Degree in English and from HKUST with an MPhil Degree in Humanities. She is interested in aging and the bilingual effect on cognition. She is now working on how language and other experiences (e.g., learning and using more than one language, music training, etc.) benefit one's cognitive abilities (e.g., attention and memory). Her MPhil thesis studied how individual bilingual experiences of younger Cantonese-English speakers influence the attentional control ability in a Forced-attention Dichotic Listening Task of Cantonese tones. Yuqi's Ph.D study is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.

Kangdi LIU 劉康迪 (BA: NENU; MA: Nankai; MPhil: UST)

Ph.D Student (HKPFS awardee)

kliubc@connect.ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

Personal Website

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-1548-4040

Kangdi graduated from Nankai University with an MA in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. She is interested in phonetics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics, especially focusing on Chinese tones. Her current work investigates how emerging technologies (i.e., virtual reality) influence tone learning and consolidation. Her previous MPhil research, which examined how sleep facilitates non-native tone learning in older adults through memory consolidation, aims to provide a deeper understanding of memory encoding, consolidation, and forgetting in the aging brain. Kangdi's Ph.D study is funded by the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship.

Jiayu LIANG 梁家瑜 (BA: Shandong U)

MPhil Student

hmjyliang@ust.hk; ResearchGate, CV

Personal Website

Jiayu holds a BA in English from Shandong University. Her research interests focus on the production and perception of non-native languages, as well as the cross-domain transfer effects between music and language experience. For her undergraduate thesis, Jiayu employed eye-tracking methodology to investigate how Mandarin speakers' musical aptitude influences their perception and production of English vowels. Currently, she is involved in an eye-tracking study examining L2 learners' perceptual learning and consolidation of English lexical stress.