Research

I am broadly interested in how human cognitive diversity co-evolved with our unique language capabilities and cultural systems. Traditional cognitive neuroscience, operating from a biologically conservative standpoint, often overlooks these crucial evolutionary components. By examining the interplay between specialized language systems and cultural evolutionary processes, I seek to better understand the full spectrum of human cognitive variation.

Below are some topics/projects that I have been working on/am interested (all focused on a key cognitive component in human mind: long-term semantic memory):

The Evolution of Semantic Space Across Cultures and Time

Semantic knowledge - our mental representation of concepts - plays a crucial role in cultural evolution. Semantics shapes how cultures develop and transmit information, and cultural processes in turn influence how we mentally represent concepts. By combining neurocognitive frameworks of semantic representation with cross-cultural research, I study how semantic systems vary across languages and cultures, and how they adapt to ecological and cultural changes.

How Language Experience Shapes Abstract Cognition

Language is an important tool for humans to communicate with one another. This linguistic capacity shapes abstract cognition through multiple mechanisms: categorization, relation building, and cultural transmission. I aim to study cross-cultural cognitive phenotype patterns and how they are shaped by specific language experiences.

Negation - a recent project that I’ve investigated is cognitive processing of negation expressions: how it’s modulated by semantic systems and whether langauge experiences can be a good predictor.

How Semantic Processing Regulates Cultural Evolutionary Processes

Information transmission forms the foundation of cumulative cultural evolution, with its effectiveness and persistence heavily influenced by both semantic representations and cognitive filtering mechanisms. These dual factors - how information is mentally represented and cognitively processed - play crucial roles in shaping cultural evolution patterns. For example, we can find the widespread preference for certain narrative structures across different cultures, which could further facilitate the transmission of certain types of cultural belief and values. I aim to study what are the fundamental semantic and cognitive constraints in such processes.