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ScIU Indiana University Bloomington
I'm a PhD student in cognitive Psychology at Indiana University. In my research, I study how humans characterize and represent visual objects in mind and how these information are processed for cognitive functions such as categorization. I use staistical analyses and mathematical modeling to study human thinking. Outside of academics I love reading, hiking and traveling. Another big hobby of mine is cooking; I like to taste food from all around the world and to invent my own recipes for fusion dishes.

Entries by Mingjia Hu

How computer science aids psychology: Cognitive modeling of natural objects

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[A cartoon drawing of a brain with the left hemisphere depicted with brain tissues and the right hemisphere a circuit board with cogs and gears.]

Could you imagine that a computer program can infer the nutritional content of some food item from reading articles on related topics? How about an algorithm that can give medical diagnoses based on radiological images? Although these abilities sound like science fiction, they are becoming closer to reality thanks to the recent integration of computer science and cognitive science…

The cognitive process behind categorizing objects

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[Schematic drawings of various everyday objects embedded in a person’s brain. A question mark is drawn to indicate the question of categorization.]

Conscious or not, we are faced with countless categorization decisions during our everyday lives. When organizing kids’ rooms, parents need to decide if various items are tools or toys, to know in which drawer to place them… No matter how fast and intuitive some categorizations may feel, the process of making any classification decision involves a chain of cognitive steps…

How cultures shape emotions

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[A collage of schematic drawings embedded in human heads representing various objects that can evoke different emotions, such as an alarm light, smiley sun, bomb, raining cloud.]

Have you ever had times when you meant to provide others with constructive criticism but ended up hurting their feelings, or other times when your heart sank after hearing others’ well-intentioned remarks? As a Chinese student wading through the American waters of unfamiliar emotions and sensitivities, this happens all too often in my daily life….

Using mathematics to study psychology. Part 2

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[A picture of a human face made up of mechanical parts, like gears.]

In my last post, I explained the defining characteristics of cognitive models and the main steps to developing a cognitive model. In this post, I’ll discuss the advantages of cognitive modeling over alternative approaches to studying human cognition and behavior, and a precaution to be taken about interpreting modeling results…

Using mathematics to study psychology. Part 1

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[A picture of a human face made up of mechanical parts, like gears.]

If you’ve ever thought about the life of a graduate student in psychology, you might have pictured someone who is asking research participants probing questions about their hidden thoughts, or perhaps someone who is discreetly observing human subjects completing some tasks while taking quick note of their behavior. In reality, we psychology students spend most of our time learning advanced statistical methods and grappling with quantitative analyses of noisy behavioral data that are difficult to interpret….

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