Perception & Experience Lab

About STOT II

STOT II is a good chance for undergraduate students to gain a deeper understanding on selected topics of interest. Students are expected to:

• conduct a detailed literature review on a selected topic.
• synthesize the theories and research findings and suggest gaps in our understanding.
• communicate with peers and me (in oral and written forms) what is learned during the literature review process.

To acheive these objectives, STOT II includes the following requirements:

• reading and thinking outside class
• bi-weekly 2-hour group meetings
• paper outline towards the end of the term
• final paper

Assessment will be based on both performance in the process (as reflected by the first three requirements above) and the final product (final paper), with equal weightings.

I work on perception, cognition, experience, and consciousness. Some of the general themes listed below could be great to ponder for STOT II students:

• How can we fully utilize our mental potentials by learning?
• How can we use our knowledge about perception to improve our lives?
• What mental capabilities define human beings as distinctive from other living organisms?

The following are examples of topics on which I will be excited to explore together. Students may suggest related topics or even their own new topics, based on the above-mentioned themes or other research projects conducted in my lab (see my lab website).

• Developing expertise in recognizing different real-world objects (e.g., chess, music, fingerprints, faces, letters and characters, birds, dogs, cars, security checking, etc.)
• Perception and emotion (and aesthetics)
• Improving our attention and multitasking abilities?
• Embodied cognition - How much higher-level reasoning is grounded in perception
• Perceptual learning - How to improve our seemingly fixed perceptual abilities?
• Multisensory learning
• Synesthesia, creativity, mental imagery, etc.
• Object perception (How do we recognize the same object in different viewpoints, lightings, etc?)
• Time perception (How do we know how long events last, and which event occur first?)
• Neural correlates of consciousness (Where can we find consciousness in the brain?)
• Other creative, fun, or applied questions
  • Why don't we like the sound of fingernails scrapping blackboard?
  • What makes some faces cute?
  • How to use our knowledge of perception to create a more pleasant environment around us? (e.g., environmental psychology, fung-shui and psychology)
  • Does an iPod help me concentrate? What about our high-tech environment? How does the digital age shape our mind?
  • How come a vertical shape looks more joyful and stable, and a tilted shape looks more fearful and troubled?

Students interested in doing a STOT II with me please send me an email including your basic information (name and student ID) as well as outlining 1-2 research topics of interest. For each topic of interest please send me 5-10 questions you come up with. They need not be refined research questions - questions that you are really curious about would be perfect. You may also include any other information you think I should know.

Contact Us

362A Sino Building
Department of Psychology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong

Tel: (852) 3943 6505
Fax: (852) 2603 5019
Email: alancnwong et gmail.com

Links

• CUHK
• CUHK Psychology
• PEN