Ping Li () is currently Sin Wai Kin Professor in

Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

and

Technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

, Chair Professor of

Neurolinguistics Neurolinguistics is the study of neural mechanisms in the human brain that controls the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methods and theories from fields such as n ...

and Bilingual Studies, and Dean of the

Faculty of Humanities A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

at the

Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is a public research university located in Hung Hom, Hong Kong near Hung Hom station. The University is one of the eight government-funded degree-granting tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Founded ...

(PolyU). Prior to joining PolyU, he was a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, and Information Sciences and Technology, and Associate Director of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences at

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

. His research interests are in

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to ...

bilingualism Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

, and

reading comprehension Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand ...

in both children and adults. He uses digital technologies and

cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental proces ...

methods to study neuroplasticity and individual differences in learning, so as to understand the relationships among languages, cultures, technology, and the brain. Li received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

Chinese linguistics Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mainl ...

from

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...

in 1983, an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the n ...

from Peking University, a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

from

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

and the

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik''; Dutch: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute situated on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen located ...

in 1990, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Center for Research in Language at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

and the McDonnell-Pew Center for Research in Cognitive Neuroscience in 1992. Li has been employed at the

Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public research university in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, formally established in 1963 by a charter granted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It is the territory's second-oldest university an ...

(1992–1996), the

University of Richmond The University of Richmond (UR or U of R) is a private liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia. It is a primarily undergraduate, residential institution with approximately 4,350 undergraduate and graduate students in five schools: the School ...

(1996–2006), and

(2008–2019), and he has also served as Program Director for the Perception, Action, and Cognition Program and the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

(2007–2009). Li was also President of the '' Society for Computation in Psychology'' and is currently Editor of ''Brain and Language, Elsevier'' and Senior Editor of '' Cognitive Science, Wiley''. He is an elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS).

Selected publications

*Yu, S., Gu, C., Huang, K., and Li, Ping (2024). Predicting the next sentence (not word) in large language models: What model-brain alignment tells us about discourse comprehension. Science Advances, 1-12. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn7744 *Gu, C., Peng, Y., Nastase, S. A., Mayer, R. E., and Li, Ping (2024). Onscreen presence of instructors in video lectures affects learners’ neural synchrony and visual attention during multimedia learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(12), e2309054121. *Li, Ping and Xu, Qihui (2022). Computational modeling of bilingual language learning: Current models and future directions. Language Learning, 73, 17-64. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12529 *Li, P., & Lan, Y.J. (2022). Digital language learning (DLL): Insights from behavior, cognition, and the brain. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25, 361-378. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000353 *MacWhinney, B., Kempe, V., Li, Ping, and Brooks, P. (2022). Emergentist approaches to language. Frontiers in Psychology. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88974-483-1 *Li, Ping and Jeong, H. (2020). The social brain of language: Grounding second language learning in social interaction. npj Science of Learning, 1-9. doi:10.1038/s41539-020-0068-7 *Li, Ping and Dong, Y. (2020). Language experience and cognitive control: A dynamic perspective. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 72, 27-52. *Li, Ping and Clariana, R. (2019). Reading comprehension in L1 and L2: An integrative approach. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 50, 94-105. *Li, Ping, Zhang, F., Yu, A., and Zhao, X. (2020). Language History Questionnaire (LHQ3): An enhanced tool for assessing multilingual experience. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23, 938-944. doi: 10.1017/S1366728918001153. *Li, Ping and Zhao, X. (2018). Computational modeling. In de Groot, A.M.B, & Hagoort, P. (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 208–229). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. *Li, Ping (2013). Computational modeling of bilingualism. A special issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16(2), 241-366. *Li, Ping and Shirai, Yashuhiro (2000). ''The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *Klein, W. and Li, Ping (2009). ''The expression of time''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *Li, Ping and Marrongelle, Karen (2013). ''Having Success with NSF: A Practical Guide''. New York: Wiley. *Grosjean, F. and Li, Ping (2013). ''The psycholinguistics of bilingualism''. New York: Wiley.

References

External links

Ping Li's Brain, Language, and Computation lab page at the Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityPing Li's Faculty Bio at the Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityPing Li's CVAAAS 2021 Class Fellow
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Chinese psychologists Developmental psycholinguists Peking University alumni Leiden University alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty Academic staff of Hong Kong Polytechnic University Bilingualism and second-language acquisition researchers American cognitive psychologists {{US-psychologist-stub