I am a Master's candidate in experimental psychology at New York University, where I also work as a research assistant in the Poeppel Lab under the supervision of Dr. David Poeppel. Here, I conduct an independent research project that investigates the effects of different conceptual relations (e.g., thematic and taxonomic relations) between written words on memory recall performance, while I also collaborate on behavioral and human electrophysiological (MEG) experiments to study music perception and cognition.

In the year of 2021, I graduated with Bachelor's degrees in both psychology and statistics and a minor in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During my undergraduate education, I used to work in the Cognitive Development & Media Lab directed by Dr. Heather Kirkorian. I was involved in multiple aspects, for example, quantitative data analysis and eye-tracking calibration, of studies comparing the effects of live and touchscreen demonstrations on toddlers' cognitive and behavioral development, such as attention, learning, reading, imitation, and object retrieval.

In general, I am fascinated by researching the cognitive mechanism of language as well as how it interacts with other cognitive processes, such as memory. It also intrigues me how our brains are wired to process selected information from a myriad of auditory input, for example, how we gradually learn to categorize phonemes when we are babies and how we process speech in such an incredible manner when it can usually be fast and ambiguous. Besides, it is also one of my favorite topics how the human perception and cognition can be modeled computationally.

Growing up in Suzhou, China, I have spoken Mandarin and Wu as my native languages and played the traditional Chinese instrument, Gu Zheng. I also play the recorder a little bit. I speak English and French as well, and I am always excited to learn new languages. In my spare time, I listen to music, do video-editing for fun, try new cooking and baking recipes, walk in the woods (if there are any woods within walking distance), and watch tons of videos of cute dogs and cats.

Cao, W., Raccah, O., Chen, P., & Poeppel, D. (submitted). The mnemonic basis of taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations. [Poster presentation]. the 2023 International Conference on Learning and Memory, Huntington Beach, CA.

Cao, W., Raccah, O., Chen, P., & Poeppel, D. (2021, Apr. 29). The mnemonic basis of taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations. [Poster presentation]. 26th Annual NYU Psychology Masters' Research Conference, New York, NY.