Hong Xu

Dr. Hong XU is an associate professor of Psychology in the School of Social Sciences. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Peking University, M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Chicago. Her research interests include neural mechanisms of visual perception and its applications in real life and human-centric AI systems.

Research Interests

Dr. Hong XU's area of expertise is in vision perception and neuroscience. She studies visual perception through a multidisplinary approach: psychophysics, electrophysiology (EEG), eye tracking, virtual reality (VR), and computational modeling. In particular, she studies face perception and self-motion heading perception and wayfinding by asking the following questions:

Visual Perception

How do we visually perceive objects (e.g., signage, faces) in daily activities (e.g., walking, cycling and driving) and how is the visual perception affected by our previous visual experience (e.g., adaptation and implicit learning)?

Human-computer interaction

What is the basis of effective design in visual displays? How does our visual system analyze large amount of data/information in a short period of time? What kind of optimization process is involved? Furthermore, what is the role of attention and eye movement in this process?

Computational modeling

How to model the hierarchical information processing system in neural networks? How is visual information transferred from low levels to high levels? How does the feedback system work synergistically with the feedforward system?

Current Grants

• A Study of Adversarial Examples for Proactively Protecting Images against DeepFake and DeepNude
• Bilingualism and Autism: Investigating Language and Social Communication Outcomes Through Intervention in Listening and Oral Skills
• Developing and Validating the Climate Change Adaptation Scale (CCAS)
• FIDES
• HOW READY ARE WE TO TRUST USING AI IN MEDICINE? A Study on Compliance to Governance, Engagement of Stakeholders and Integration into Medical System
• Mechanisms of visual perception and its application in artificial intelligence
• Programme for Micro-Mobility Safety and Utility Research
• Research into impacts of next generation electronic road pricing (ERP-2) system
• Research Into Interacting With Artificially Intelligent Beings Of The Future With particular Focus On Autonomous Vehicles In An Urban Setting
• SSS - Cat8 EOM
• TrustFUL: Trustworthy Federated Ubiquitous Learning
• TrustFUL: Trustworthy Federated Ubiquitous Learning (WeBank)
• Visual Perception and Action in Motion

Articles (Journal)

Burns E.J., Tree J., Chan A.H.D., and Xu H. (2018). Bilingualism shapes the other race effect. Vision Research, S0042-6989(30145-7), doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2018.07.004.

Ying H.J., Burns E.J., Choo A.M., and Xu H. (2020). Temporal and spatial ensemble statistics are formed by distinct mechanisms. Cognition, 195, 104128.

Sou K.L., and Xu H. (2019). Brief facial emotion aftereffect occurs earlier for angry than happy adaptation. Vision Research, 162, 35-42.

Ying H.J., Burns E.J., Lin X.Y., and Xu H. (2019). Ensemble statistics shape face adaptation and the cheerleader effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(3), 421-436.

Xu H., Sou K., and Burns E. (2018, November). Neural correlates of facial emotion perception with alexithymia and autistic traits. Paper presented at Society for Neuroscience (SfN), San Diego, CA, USA.