People

Principle Investigator

Xin Xie, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Language Science, University of California, Irvine, Social Science Plaza B, Room 2223,

Xin Xie, PhD,

Senior lab members

  • Haleh Farahbod, PhD,
  • Specialist,
  • Departments of Cognitive Sciences and Language Science.
  • University of California, Irvine

  •  Chih-Chao (Will) Chang,
  • I’m a third-year PhD student in Language Science. My current research in the lab focuses on the encoding of phonetic detail in speech perception, and how this process is shaped by higher-level linguistic information. I’m particularly interested in the neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between bottom-up and top-down information during continuous speech processing.
  • Presentations:
  • Chang, C.-C., Li, J., & Xie, X. (2025). Phonetic Encoding and Sentence Predictability in Continuous Speech. Poster presented at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL), Washington, D.C., USA.
  • Chang, C.-C., Li, J., & Xie, X. (2024). Sentence Predictability Shapes the Encoding of Phonetic Detail. Poster presented at CAMP and SNL 2024.

  • Jiaxuan Li,
  • I am a PhD student in Language Science. My research build bridges between human brains and machines. I am interested how humans process noisy language input given limited cognitive resources and they adapt to statistical regularities in a noise linguistic environment, and to what extent modern NLP systems are sensitive to errors and noise. 

  • Shawn Cummings,
  • I’m a postdoc in Language Science. My research program focuses on the cognitive mechanisms underlying adaptation in speech perception: as each new talker we encounter produces their words differently, How do we nevertheless easily and robustly understand one another? My current work centers on computational modelling to adjudicate between disparate mechanisms such as low-level signal normalization versus post-perceptual decision-making.

  • Ya-Ning Wu,
  • I’m a PhD student in the Cognitive Sciences program at UC Irvine. My research focuses on two central questions: (1) how humans perceive and extract rhythm, and (2) the role of prosody in speech production planning. To explore these questions, I use a combination of behavioral studies with human participants and modeling through robot embodiment.
  • Previously, I have worked on signal processing and MEG.

  • Yuting Gu,
  • Hi everyone, I’m Yuting and I’m a fourth-year PhD candidate in Language Science. My research focuses on the cognitive mechanisms underlying speech perception and adaptation. Most recently I’ve been working on projects related to individual differences in speech perception, with a focus on listeners’ long-term linguistic experience.

Research Assistants

  • Frankie Boren,
  • Fourth-year undergraduate 
  • Departments of Language Science.
  • Jacob Bower,
  • Hello! My name is Jacob Bower and I am a recent graduate from UCLA, where I studied Cognitive Science and Linguistics. My research interests within language science are wide-ranging, but primarily relate to speech perception and experimental phonetics/phonology. I am especially interested in matters related to bilingualism, and studying how language experience affects real-time speech perception and production.
  • Dan Quoc Nguyen,
  • Hi! My name is Dan and I recently received my bachelors in Cognitive Sciences and Language Science from UC Irvine. My prior research has focused on how the linguistic environment shapes bilingual language production and how these mechanisms underlying speech may adapt and change throughout the lifespan. I am now working on a project examining linguistic diversity and how this may influence the perception of accented speech. 
  • Qiyan Ye,
  • I’m Qiyan Ye, a recent graduate with bachelor degrees in Language Science and Psychology. Broadly, I’m interested in how we learn and communicate in a linguistically diverse environment. Currently, my work focuses on the underlying mental representation of native and non-native voices.
  • Conference Proceedings:
  • Ye, Q., & Xie, X. (2025). Recognizing Voices: Do Listeners Rely on Specific Exemplars or Summary Statistics? Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47.
  • Read here

Former Lab Members:

  • Yiming Lu,
  • Former graduate Student

  • Michelle Chao
  • Former Research Assistant

Collaborators

Dr. Gregory Hickok, Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Professor of Speech and Language Science, University of California, Irvine,

Dr. Kourosh Saberi, Professor of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine,

Dr. Connor Mayer, Assistant Professor, Department of Language Science, University of California, Irvine,

Dr. Chigusa Kurumada, Assistant Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester,

Dr. T. Florian Jaeger, Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Computer Science, University of Rochester,

Dr. Susanne M Jaeggi, Professor, School of Education, University of California, Irvine,