Assistant Professor
Biography
Ph.D., Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, 2020
Dr. Cheng received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from University of California San Diego. Her main research interests lie in language processing and learning, the neural foundations of language, and early neural plasticity for language. She has been working with deaf individuals with impoverished early language experience, who acquired American Sign Language as a first language after childhood. She does psycholinguistic experiments as well as neuroimaging studies.
Research
Selected Research
- Cheng, Q., Roth, A., Halgren, E., Klein, D., Chen, J. K., & Mayberry, R. I. (2023). Restricted language access during childhood affects adult brain structure in selective language regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(7), e2215423120.
- Cheng, Q., & Mayberry, R. I. (2021). When event knowledge overrides word order in sentence comprehension: Learning a first language after childhood. Developmental science, 24(5), e13073.
- Cheng, Q., Silvano, E., & Bedny, M. (2020). Sensitive periods in cortical specialization for language: insights from studies with deaf and blind individuals. Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 36, 169-176.
- Cheng, Q., & Mayberry, R. I. (2019). Acquiring a first language in adolescence: the case of basic word order in American Sign Language. Journal of child language, 46(2), 214-240.
- Cheng, Q., Roth, A., Halgren, E., & Mayberry, R. I. (2019). Effects of early language deprivation on brain connectivity: Language pathways in deaf native and late first-language learners of American Sign Language. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 13, 320.