Yaqiong Xiao Lab

1. Cognitive and social-cognitive development: We investigate how cognitive and  social-cognitive abilities emerge and change across childhood, with a focus on language, attention, learning, and social cognition. By  integrating behavioral, attentional, physiological, and neural measures, we examine how children perceive, attend to, and process cognitively and socially relevant information across development.

2. Developmental trajectories and individual differences: Using longitudinal approaches, we investigate how early behavioral, attentional, physiological, and neural characteristics relate to subsequent developmental outcomes and individual differences. We are particularly interested in the factors that contribute to variability in developmental trajectories and in how early individual differences shape later cognitive and social development.

3. Atypical development in autism: We investigate atypical developmental pathways in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), focusing on language, social attention, cognitive processing, and neurophysiological responses. By examining typical and atypical development within a common framework, we aim to understand the mechanisms underlying developmental divergence and individual differences in developmental outcomes.