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Fei Xu Office: 604-822-5972 |
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| Department of Psychology 2406-2136 West Mall University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z4 |
NOTE: As of July 1, 2009, I will be joining the faculty in the Department of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Upcoming workshop, "Probabilistic models of cognitive development", May 24-29, 2009, Banff, Canada. Website: http://www.birs.ca/2009/5_day_workshops.html
Ph.D. 1995 Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1995-1997 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, and MIT 1997-2003 Assistant Professor, Northeastern University, Boston, USA 2003-2008 Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 2007-2008 Visiting professor, Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley, USA 2008-present Professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Research Interests My research focuses on cognitive development and language acquisition. Three lines of work are currently on-going in my lab: 1) Rational constructivism, statistical inference, and cognitive development: how infants, children, and adults combine prior knowledge and statistical information in the input in phyiscal reasoning, word learning, social cognition, and other domains of inductive learning. 2) Object kinds, sortal concepts, and the nature of early words: the process of early word learning and how learning words for object categories guides early conceptual development in domains such as infants' categorization, individuation, and inductive inference; 3) Numerical cognition in infants with Williams Syndrome and in adults using fMRI. Xu, F. & Carey, S. (1996) Infants' metaphysics: the case of numerical identity. Cognitive Psychology, 30, 111-153. (pdf) Xu, F. & Carey, S. (2000) The emergence of kind concepts: a rejoinder to Needham and Baillargeon (2000). Cognition, 74, 285-301. (pdf) Carey, S. & Xu, F. (2001)
Infants' knowledge of objects: Beyond object files and object tracking. Cognition , 80 , 179-213. (pdf) Xu, F. (2002) The role of language in acquiring object kind concepts in infancy. Cognition, 85, 223-250. (pdf) Xu, F., Spelke, E.S., & Goddard, S. (2005) Number sense in human infants. Developmental Science, 8, 88-101. (pdf) Xu,F., Cote, M. & Baker, A. (2005) Labeling guides object individuation in 12-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 16, 372-377. (pdf) Xu, F. & Rhemtulla, M. (2005) In defense of psychological essentialism. In B.G. Bara, L. Barsalou, and M. Bucciarelli (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.2377-2380). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (pdf) Xu, F. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2005) Word learning as Bayesian inference: evidence from preschoolers. In B.G. Bara, L. Barsalou, and M. Bucciarelli (eds.),Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2381-2386). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (pdf) Denison, S., Konopczynski, K., Garcia, V., & Xu, F. (2006) Probabilistic reasoning in preschoolers: random sampling and base rate. In R. Sun and N. Miyake (eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1216-1221). (pdf) Xu, F. & Arriaga, R. I. (2007) Number discrimination in 10-month-old infants. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25, 103-108. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Rational statistical inference and cognitive development. In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, & S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Foundations and the Future (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press. (pdf) Xu, F. & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2007) Word learning as Bayesian inference. Psychological Review, 114, 245-272. (pdf) Xu, F. & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2007) Sensitivity to sampling in Bayesian word learning. Developmental Science, 10, 288-297. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Language acquisition and concept formation: count nouns and object kinds. In G. Gaskell (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Oxford University Press. (pdf) Dewar, K. & Xu, F. (2007) Do 9-month-old infants expect distinct words to refer to kinds? Developmental Psychology, 43, 1227-1238. (pdf) Rhemtulla, M. & Xu, F. (2007) Sortal concepts and causal continuity: Comment on Rips, Blok, and Newman (2006). Psychological Review, 114, 1087-1094. (pdf) Rhemtulla, M. & Xu, F. (2007) Postscript: sortal concepts are fundamental for tracing identity. Psychological Review, 114, 1095. (pdf) Ansari, D., Lyons, I., van Eimeren, L., & Xu, F. (2007) The role of the temporo-parietal junction in small and large number processing: an fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1845-1853. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 400-406. (pdf) Xu, F. & Garcia, V. (2008) Intuitive statistics by 8-month-old infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 5012-5015. (pdf) Kushnir, T., Xu, F. & Wellman, H. (2008) Preschoolers use statistical sampling information to infer the preferences of others. In V. Sloutsky, B. Love, & K. MacRae (Eds.) Proceedings of the 30 th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pdf) Van Hewegen, J., Ansari, D., Xu, F. & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2008) Small and large number processing in infants and toddlers with Williams syndrome. Developmental Science, 11, 637-643. Hall, D.G., Corrigall, K., Rhemtulla, M., Donegan, E. & Xu, F. (2008) Infants' use of lexical-category-to-meaning links in object individuation. Child Development, 39, 1432-1443. (pdf) Kemp, C. & Xu, F. (2008) An ideal observer model of infant object perception. Proceedings of the 22 nd Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. (pdf) Lucas, C., Griffiths, T., Xu, F. & Fawcett, C. (2008) A rational model of preference learning and choice prediction by children. Proceedings of the 22 nd Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. (pdf) Xu, F. (in press) Count nouns, sortal concepts, and the nature of early words. J. Pelletier (ed.), Kinds, things, and stuff: New Directions in Cognitive Science , Vol. 13. Oxford University Press. Dewar, K. & Xu, F. (2009) Do early nouns refer to kinds or distinct shapes? Evidence from 10-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 20, 252-257. (pdf) Xu, F., Dewar, K. & Perfors, A. (2009) Induction, overhypotheses, and the shape bias: Some arguments and evidence for rational constructivism. In B. M. Hood and L. Santos (Eds.), The origins of object knowledge (pp. 263-284). Oxford University Press. (pdf) Xu, F. & Denison, S. (in press) Statistical inference and sensitivity to sampling in 11-month-old infants. Cognition. (pdf) Publications listed by topic Rational constructivism, statistical inference, and cognitive development Xu, F. & Denison, S. (2009) Statistical inference and sensitivity to sampling in 11-month-old infants. Cognition. (pdf) Xu, F., Dewar, K. & Perfors, A. (2009) Induction, overhypotheses, and the shape bias: Some arguments and evidence for rational constructivism. In B. M. Hood and L. Santos (Eds.), The origins of object knowledge (pp. 263-284). Oxford University Press. (pdf) Kemp, C. & Xu, F. (2008) An ideal observer model of infant object perception. Proceedings of the 22 nd Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. (pdf) Lucas, C., Griffiths, T., Xu, F. & Fawcett, C. (2008) A rational model of preference learning and choice prediction by children. Proceedings of the 22 nd Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. (pdf) Kushnir, T., Xu, F. & Wellman, H. (2008) Preschoolers use statistical sampling information to infer the preferences of others.
In V. Sloutsky, B. Love, & K. MacRae (Eds.) Proceedings of the 30 th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pdf) Xu, F. & Garcia, V. (2008) Intuitive statistics by 8-month-old infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 5012-5015. (pdf) Xu, F. & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2007) Word learning as Bayesian inference. Psychological Review, 114, 245-272. (pdf) Xu, F. & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2007) Sensitivity to sampling in Bayesian word learning. Developmental Science, 10, 288-297. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Rational statistical inference and cognitive development. In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, & S. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Foundations and the Future (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press. (pdf) Denison, S., Konopczynski, K., Garcia, V., & Xu, F. (2006) Probabilistic reasoning in preschoolers: random sampling and base rate. In R. Sun and N. Miyake (eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1216-1221). (pdf) Sortal concepts and early word learning Xu, F. (2002) The role of language in acquiring object kind concepts in infancy. Cognition, 85, 223-250. (pdf) Xu, F. (2005) Categories, kinds, and object individuation in infancy. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe and D. Rakison (eds.), Building object categories in developmental time (pp. 63-89). Papers from the 32nd Carnegie Symposium on Cognition. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Language acquisition and concept formation: count nouns and object kinds. In G. Gaskell (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Oxford University Press. (pdf) Dewar, K. & Xu, F. (2007) Do 9-month-old infants expect distinct words to refer to kinds? Developmental Psychology, 43, 1227-1238. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 400-406. (pdf) Xu, F. (in press) Count nouns, sortal concepts, and the nature of early words. J. Pelletier (ed.), Kinds, things, and stuff: New Directions in Cognitive Science , Vol. 13. Oxford University Press. Hall, D.G., Corrigall, K., Rhemtulla, M., Donegan, E. & Xu, F. (2008) Infants' use of lexical-category-to-meaning links in object individuation. Child Development, 39, 1432-1443. (pdf) Dewar, K. & Xu, F. (2009) Do early nouns refer to kinds or distinct shapes? Evidence from 10-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 20, 252-257. (pdf) Object individuation and sortal concepts Xu, F. & Carey, S. (1996) Infants' metaphysics: the case of numerical identity. Cognitive Psychology, 30, 111-153. (pdf) Xu, F. & Carey, S. (2000) The emergence of kind concepts: a rejoinder to Needham and Baillargeon (2000). Cognition, 74, 285-301. (pdf) Carey, S. & Xu, F. (2001) Infants' knowledge of objects: Beyond object files and object tracking. Cognition , 80 , 179-213. (pdf) Xu, F., Carey, S. & Quint, N. (2004) The emergence of kind-based object individuation in infancy. Cognitive Psychology, 49, 155-190. (pdf) Xu, F. & Baker, A. (2005) Object individuation in 10-month-old infants using a simplified manual search method. Journal of Cognition and Development, 6, 307-323. (pdf) Rhemtulla, M. & Xu, F. (2007) Sortal concepts and causal continuity: Comment on Rips, Blok, and Newman (2006). Psychological Review. (pdf) Rhemtulla, M. & Xu, F. (2007) Postscript: sortal concepts are fundamental for tracing identity. Psychological Review. (pdf) Xu, F. (2007) Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (pdf) Number representations in infants and adults Xu, F. & Spelke, E. S. (2000) Large number discrimination in 6-month-old infants. Cognition, 74, B1-B11. (pdf) Xu, F. (2003) Numerosity discrimination in infants: Evidence for two systems of representations. Cognition, 89, B15-B25. (pdf) Xu, F., Spelke, E.S., & Goddard, S. (2005) Number sense in human infants. Developmental Science, 8, 88-101. (pdf) Xu, F. & Arriaga, R. I. (2007) Number discrimination in 10-month-old infants. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25, 103-108. (pdf) Ansari, D., Lyons, I., van Eimeren, L., & Xu, F. (2007) The role of the temporo-parietal junction in small and large number processing: an fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 1845-1853. (pdf) Van Hewegen, J., Ansari, D., Xu, F. & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2008) Small and large number processing in infants and toddlers with Williams syndrome. Developmental Science, 11, 637-643. Other publications Xu, F. & Rhemtulla, M. (2005) In defense of psychological essentialism. In B.G. Bara, L. Barsalou, and M. Bucciarelli (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.2377-2380). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (pdf) Marcus, G., Pinker, S., Ullman, M., Hollander, M., Rosen, J. & Xu, F. (1992) Overregularization in Language Acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 57(4). Xu, F. & Pinker, S. (1995) Weird past tense forms. Journal of Child Language, 22, 531-556.
Representative publications (see below for publications listed by topic)
Xu, F. & Pinker, S. (1995) Weird past tense forms. Journal of Child Language, 22, 531-556.
Xu, F. (1997) From Lot's wife to a pillar of salt: Evidence for physical object as a sortal concept. Mind and Language, 12, 365-392. (pdf)
Leslie, A., Xu, F., Tremoulet, P. & Scholl, B. (1998) Indexing and the object concept: "what" and "where" in infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 10-18. (pdf)
Xu, F., Carey, S., & Welch, J. (1999) Infants' ability to use object kind information for object individuation. Cognition, 70, 137-166. (pdf)
Xu, F. (1999) Object individuation and object identity in infancy: The role of spatiotemporal information, object property information, and language. Acta Psychologica, 102, 113-136. (pdf)
Xu, F. & Spelke, E. S. (2000) Large number discrimination in 6-month-old infants. Cognition, 74, B1-B11. (pdf)
Tenenbaum, J.B. & Xu, F. (2000) Word learning as Bayesian inference. In L. Gleitman and A. Joshi (eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 517-522). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (pdf)
Xu, F. (2003) The development of object individuation in infancy. In H. Hayne & J. Fagen (eds.), Progress in Infancy Research, Vol. 3 (pp. 159-192). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. (pdf)
Xu, F. (2003) Numerosity discrimination in infants: Evidence for two systems of representations. Cognition, 89, B15-B25. (pdf)
Xu, F., Carey, S. & Quint, N. (2004) The emergence of kind-based object individuation in infancy. Cognitive Psychology, 49, 155-190. (pdf)
Xu, F. (2005) Categories, kinds, and object individuation in infancy. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe and D. Rakison (eds.), Building object categories in developmental time (pp. 63-89). Papers from the 32nd Carnegie Symposium on Cognition. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. (pdf)
Xu, F. & Baker, A. (2005) Object individuation in 10-month-old infants using a simplified manual search method. Journal of Cognition and Development, 6, 307-323. (pdf)
Xu,F., Cote, M. & Baker, A. (2005) Labeling guides object individuation in 12-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 16, 372-377. (pdf)
Xu, F. (1997) From Lot's wife to a pillar of salt: Evidence for physical object as a sortal concept. Mind and Language, 12, 365-392. (pdf)
Leslie, A., Xu, F., Tremoulet, P. & Scholl, B. (1998) Indexing and the object concept: "what" and "where" in infancy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 10-18. (pdf)
Xu, F., Carey, S., & Welch, J. (1999) Infants' ability to use object kind information for object individuation. Cognition, 70, 137-166. (pdf)
Xu, F. (1999) Object individuation and object identity in infancy: The role of spatiotemporal information, object property information, and language. Acta Psychologica, 102, 113-136. (pdf)
