XIAOQIAN LI

Researcher-in-training

Research Interests:

After graduating from South China Normal University as a Bachelor in 2007, I began my graduate study on language in Department of Psychology, Peking University with Professor Xiaolin Zhou. Until now my research focused on referential processing using ERPs. My first experiment explored the long distance reference of Chinese reflexive, which violated Chomsky’s Binding Theory. The next two experiments were about verb-based implicit causality. The current two ERP studies are still about Chinese reflexive which is different from English with sub-command binding function. I got interesting results from these studies and to some extend they are all related.

I will begin my PhD study with Professor Gün Semin as of September, 2010. I hope to study more social behavior through language research and try to find out their neural basis. My possible research in UU will focus on action in language through behavioral method, ERPs and fMRI. Action and language are two core systems of human cognition. Moreover, they are not separate but interdependent. Recent findings have suggested that the two systems recruit partly overlapping neural networks. There are many interesting topics in this area. For example, if different types of verbs, e.g. concrete vs. abstract verbs recruit the same neural circuitry; how negation of action is reflected in the brain; the role of agents in the action processing. I hope to find some answers to these questions.

CV: Curvit

Publications

Li, X. & Zhou, X. (2010) Who is ziji? ERP responses to the Chinese reflexive pronoun during sentence comprehension. Brain Research, 1331, 96-104.  (pdf)