Project:
Predictive Minds Across Domains and Development: Computational Tests of Prediction in Autism
Laboratories:
Joshua Tenenbaum, Ph.D., Jesse Snedeker, Ph.D.
Biographical Information:
Qiong earned her B.S. in Psychology from Zhejiang University, her M.A. in Psychology from New York University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University. Using age-targeted behavioral studies with infants, children, and adults, Qiong’s PhD research revealed how people use explanations to revise their reasoning when core physical or social predictions are violated. She is now building computational modeling skills that she plans to integrate with behavioral approaches to investigate cognitive development.
Current Work:
For many people, prediction feels automatic: we know where a ball will roll or what a friend will do when she picks up her keys. For autistic people, however, prediction may work differently, especially in social situations. This project explores the foundations of prediction in autistic and typically developing people across development. To do so, the stimuli will be well-controlled animated stimuli depicting the movement of objects, intentional agents, and social agents. In some videos, parts of the scene will be occluded, challenging participants to predict what happens next when visual information is missing. This project will combine behavioral experiments with computational models to examine the mechanisms underlying prediction, comparing performance across autistic and typically developing children and adults. Findings will help chart the developmental trajectory of predictive abilities and inform individualized diagnosis for autism.
Publications:
Cao, Q., Smith-Flores, A., Zhou, J., Perez, J., & Feigenson, L. (2025). Infants’ surprise-induced learning in the social domain. Cognition, 264, 106227.
Cao, Q., & Feigenson, L. (2024). Children’s representation of coincidence. Cognition, 250, 105854.
*Cao, Q., *Liu, D., & Feigenson, L. (2025). Goldilocks pattern of learning after observing unexpected physical events. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47)
Cao, Q., Cao, A., Raz, G., Tenenbaum, J., & Liu, S. (2025). Surprise isn’t symmetrical: Adults’ looking suggests non-perceptual considerations during dishabituation. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 47).
Keywords:
Prediction, development, computational modeling, physical and social domains