Rachel Wu

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development,
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College,
Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Phone: +44 (0)20 7631 6258
Fax: +44 (0)20 7631 6587
Email: r.wu@bbk.ac.uk

Personal website: www.rachelwu.com
Academia.edu: Rachel Wu

Research interests

Developmental dynamics of attention and learning

Curriculum vitaepdf format

Education

2007 – 2011
Ph.D. in Psychology
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Supervisors: Natasha Z. Kirkham and Denis Mareschal

2010 – 2011
Diploma in Art and Design
The Institute, Middlesex University, UK

2006 – 2007
M.Sc. in Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology
Anna Freud Centre, University College London, London, UK
Supervisors: Peter Fonagy, Pasco Fearon, and Saul Hillman

2002 – 2006
B.S. in Psychology, B.S. in History and Anthropology
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA USA
Supervisor: David H. Rakison

Employment

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Birkbeck (with Martin Eimer & Tim Smith)

Publications

  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010). No two cues are alike: Depth of learning during infancy is dependent on what orients attention. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 107, 118-136.pdf format
  • Wu, R., Mareschal, D., & Rakison, D. H. (2011). Attention to multiple cues during spontaneous object labeling. Infancy, 16(5), 545–556.pdf format
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., Richardson, D. C., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2011). Infants learn about objects from statistics and people. Developmental Psychology.pdf format
  • Yurovsky, D., Wu, R., Yu., C., Kirkham, N. Z., & Smith, L. B. (2011). Model selection for eye movements: assessing the role of attentional cues in infant learning. In E. J. Davelaar (Ed.), Connectionist models of neurocognition and emergent behavior: From theory to applications. (pp. 58-75) Singapore: World Scientific.
  • Scerif, G., & Wu, R. (in press). Developmental Disorders. In A.C. Nobre & S. Kastner (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Attention. Oxford: OUP
  • Karmiloff-Smith, A., Broadbent, H., Farran, E. K., Longhi, E., D’Souza, D., Metcalfe, K., Tassabehji, M., Wu, R., Senju, A., Happe, F., Turnpenny, P., & Sansbury, F. (forthcoming). Social Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Insights from Partial Deletion Patients. Frontiers in Psychology.
  • Kirkham, N. Z., Richardson, D. C., Wu, R., & Johnson, S. P. (accepted). The importance of ‘what’: Infants use featural information to index events. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., Swan, K. A., & Gliga, T. (under revision). Direct social signals scaffold learning from novel attention cues during infancy.
  • Lloyd-Fox, S., Wu, R., Elwell, C. E., & Johnson, M. H. (submitted). Common neurodevelopment of action perception and production in human infants.
  • Morse, A., Hannagan, T., & Wu, R. (submitted). Response to Rohlfing, K. J. and Wrede, B. ‘What Novel Scientific and Technological Questions Developmental Robotics Bring to HRI? Are We Ready for a Loop?’ IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development.

Conference Proceedings

  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., Richardson, D. C., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010). Social cues support learning about objects from statistics in infancy. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1228-1233). Portland, OR: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., Swan, K. A., & Gliga, T. (2011). Direct social signals scaffold and transfer learning from novel cues during infancy. In C. Hoelscher, T. F. Shipley, & L. Carlson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Boston, MA: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., Swan, K. A., & Gliga, T. (2011). Infants use social signals to learn from unfamiliar referential cues. In A. Karmiloff-Smith, B. Kokinov, & N. Nersessian (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the European Cognitive Science Society. Sofia, Bulgaria: Cognitive Science Society. Awarded Best Student Paper Award.
  • Hannagan, T., & Wu, R. (2011). Cued multimodal learning in infancy: A neuro-computational model. In C. Hoelscher, T. F. Shipley, & L. Carlson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Boston, MA: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Yurovsky, D., Hidaka, S., & Wu, R. (submitted). Quantitative Linking Hypotheses for Infant Eye Movements.

Select Grants and Awards

  • British Academy Small Research Grant, Attentional Mechanisms for Learning to Learn, SG-110780 (£7,500), Role: PI. Co-PIs: Martin Eimer, Gaia Scerif, Richard Aslin
  • Birkbeck Graduate Research School Generic Skills Funding for workshop (£1818)
  • British Psychological Society (BPS) Postdoctoral Study Visits Award
  • BPS Postdoctoral/Lecturer Conference Bursary
  • International Congress of Psychology 2016 logo design competition, second prize
  • Cognitive Development Society Travel Award
  • British Academy Overseas Conference Grant
  • European Cognitive Science Society Best Student Paper Prize
  • Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN) Brain Travel Grant (x2)
  • Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Student Travel Award
  • British Psychological Society (BPS) International Collaboration Award
  • Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology (SRIP) graduate prize
  • University of London Central Research Fund Grant, Learning from Social and Non-Social Attention Cues in a Noisy Environment.
  • BPS Postgraduate Visits Award
  • Roberts@BBK 2009 Postgraduate Prize
  • Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) Grindley Grant
  • University of London Central Research Fund Grant, Imitation of the New, Not the Old: Mutual Exclusivity of Action Patterns.
  • Birkbeck International Research Studentship
  • Birkbeck Overseas Research Scholarship
  • CMU Women's Association Scholarship
  • CMU Psychology Research Award
  • CMU Small Undergraduate Research Grant (x2)

Miscellaneous

  • Logo and website: International Conference on Development and Learning 2012, San Diego, CA, USA
  • Logo: XXXI International Congress of Psychology 2016, Yokohama, Japan, second prize (September, 2011)
  • Logo: Genes Environment Lifespan Lab, BBK (August, 2011)
  • David E. Rumelhart Prize medallion design with David Waller
  • Logo and cover art: 12th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop
  • Feature in ‘Growing Babies’, BBC, London, UK (Dec 2008).
  • Cover art: Gershkoff-Stowe, L., & Rakison, D. H. (Eds.), (2005). Building object categories in developmental time. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Presentations

  • Yurovsky, D., Hidaka, S., & Wu, R. (2012, June). Quantitative Linking Hypotheses for Infant Eye Movements. Talk to be presented at ICIS, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Hannagan, T., & Wu, R. (2012, June). A computational model for cued infant learning. Talk to be presented at ICIS, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Wu, R., Scerif, G., Aslin, R. N., Smith, T. J., & Eimer, M. (2012, May). Top-down attentional selection as a marker of learning: An ERP study. Poster submitted to VSS, Naples, FL, USA.
  • Wu, R., Scerif, G., Aslin, R. N., Smith, T. J., & Eimer, M. (2012, March). Top-down attentional selection as a marker of learning: An ERP study. Talk to be presented at the Gaze Bias Learning workshop, Tokyo, Japan.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2012, March). Learning to learn from attention cues during infancy. Keynote to be presented at Japan Society for Developmental Psychology conference, Nagoya, Japan.
  • Wu, R., Scerif, G., Aslin, R. N., Smith, T. J., & Eimer, M. (2012, Jan). Top-down attentional selection as a marker of learning: An ERP study. Talk presented at the Gaze Bias Learning workshop, London, UK.
  • Wu, R., Smith, T. J., Nicholas, S., & Eimer, M. (2011, Nov). ERP marker of attentional target selection during visual search with eye movements. Poster presented at Society for Neuroscience, Washington D.C.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., Swan, K. A., & Gliga, T. (2011, Oct). Direct social signals scaffold and transfer learning from unfamiliar referential cues during infancy. Poster to be presented at Cognitive Development Society, Philadelphia, PA.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2011, Oct). Learning to learn from attention during infancy. Talk to be presented at Cognitive Development Society, Philadelphia, PA.
  • Hannagan, T., Wu, R., & Yu, C. (2011, August). A computational model for cued infant learning. Poster presented at ICDL, Frankfurt, Germany.
  • Hannagan, T., & Wu, R. (2011, July). Cued multimodal learning in infancy: A neuro-computational model. Poster presented at CogSci, Boston, MA.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., Swan, K. A., & Gliga, T. (2011, July). Infants use social signals to learn from unfamiliar referential cues. Talk presented at CogSci, Boston, MA.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., Swan, K. A., & Gliga, T. (2011, May). Social signals scaffold learning from novel cues during infancy. Talk presented at EuroCogSci, Sofia, Bulgaria.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., & Gliga, T. (2011, March). Infants use social signals to learn from unfamiliar referential cues. Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Biennial Meeting, Montreal, QC, Canada.
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., Richardson, D. C., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, Sept). Infants learn about objects from statistics and people. Poster presented at the Atkinson Braddick Celebration, Oxford, UK.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, Sept). Learning from attention cues during infancy. Talk presented at the British Psychological Society (BPS) Developmental Section Conference, London, UK.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, Sept). Learning from attention cues during infancy. Graduate prize talk presented at the Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology (SRIP) annual conference, Leuven, Belgium
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, August). Social cues facilitate visual statistical learning. Talk presented at the Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference, Portland, OR, USA.
  • Yurovsky, D., Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., & Yu, C. (2010, August). Learning cross-modal contingencies through attention cues. Poster presented at the Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference, Portland, OR, USA.
  • Yurovsky, D., Wu, R., Hidaka, S., Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2010, August). Linking Learning to Looking: Model Selection for Eye Movements. Talk presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Psychology, Portland, Oregon, USA.
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, May). Social cues support feature co-occurrence learning in infancy. Invited talk to be presented at EyeTraCKConf, Tobii Technology, Uppsala, Sweden.
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, May). Visual statistical learning with and without an attention cue in infancy. Poster presented at the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) Annual Meeting, Naples, FL, USA.
  • Amir, O., Wu, R., & Biederman, I. (2010, May). Adult shape preferences are evident in infancy. Poster presented at VSS, Naples, FL, USA.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, April). Learning (to learn) from attention cues in infancy. Talk presented at University College London.
  • Yurovsky, D., Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z., & Yu, C. (2010, April). Learning cross-modal contingencies through attention cues. Paper presented at the Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW), London, UK.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, April). Learning (to learn) from attention cues in infancy. Talk presented at Indiana University.
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, March). Learning (to learn) from attention cues in infancy. Talk presented at the University of Rochester
  • Wu, R., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, March). Learning (to learn) from attention cues in infancy. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Baltimore, MD, USA.
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, March). Visual statistical learning in a noisy environment. Poster presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Baltimore, MD, USA.
  • Kirkham, N. Z., & Wu, R. (2010, March). Learning what to learn: How different attention cues mediate what and how babies learn. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Baltimore, MD, USA.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, March). Learning (to learn) from attention cues in infancy. Talk presented at the University of Delaware.
  • Wu, R., Gopnik, A., & Kirkham, N. Z. (2010, January). Visual statistical learning with social cues. Poster presented at the Cognitive Development Center (CDC) Opening Conference, Budpaest, Hungary.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2009, November). Learning (to learn) from attention cues in infancy. Talk presented at the University of Oxford.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2009, Sept). Perceptual learning with attention cues in a noisy environment. Paper presented at the British Psychological Society (BPS) Developmental Section Conference, Nottingham, UK.
  • Wu, R., Kirkham, N. Z, & Markman, E. M. (2009, Sept). Imitation of the new, not the old: Mutual exclusivity of action patterns. Paper presented at the British Psychological Society (BPS) Developmental Section Conference, Nottingham, UK.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2009, June). Binding across multiple redundant cues in a noisy environment. Paper presented at the Roberts@BBK 2009 Postgraduate Prize Competition, London, UK.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2009, April). Binding across multiple redundant cues in a noisy environment. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Biennial Meeting, Denver, CO, USA.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2009, April). Learning from looking: Impact of attention-directing cues on visual pattern processing in infancy. Poster presented at SRCD 2009, Denver, CO, USA.
  • Kirkham, N. Z., Wu, R., & Markman, E. M. (2009, April). Imitation of the new, not the old: Mutual exclusivity of action patterns. Poster presented at SRCD 2009, Denver, CO, USA.
  • Wu, R. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2008, September). Learning from Looking: Impact of Attention-Directing Cues on Visual Pattern Processing in Infancy. Paper presented at the 2008 BPS Developmental Section Conference, Oxford Brookes, UK.
  • Wu, R. & Rakison, D. (2008, March). Attention to features in object labeling. Poster presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Vancouver, BC, Canada.
  • Wu, R. & Rakison, D. (2006, May). Attention to features in object labeling. Paper presented at CMU, Meeting of the Minds, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
  • Wu, R. & Rakison, D. (2005, May). Do infants associate parts with function, motion, or objects? Poster presented at CMU, Meeting of the Minds, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
  • Wu, R. & Rakison, D. (2005, April). Do infants associate parts with function, motion, or objects? Poster presented at Marshall University, 2005 Tri-State Psychology Conference, Huntington, WV, USA.