A bit about Xiaoyun Chen
I am a Faculty Doctoral Fellow associated with the Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholarship Programme at Lancaster University studying the curiosity-driven learning mechanisms of infants under the supervision of Prof. Gert Westermann and Dr. Katie Twomey.
Curiosity as a basic component of cognition plays a role in creating motivation in our learning. People learn more when they are curious than when they are not. My research interests will focus on how curiosity enhances infants’ learning and what the behavioral and neural mechanisms behind this are. I will be using interdisciplinary methods to explore the answers to these questions. I completed my bachelor's degree at Guangzhou Medical University. Before I completed my MSc in Developmental disorders at Lancaster University in 2017, I worked with children with autism for two years in Shenzhen, China.