Prof. Sarina Hui-Lin Chien | Learning & Development | Research Excellence Award
Professor | The University of China Medical University | Taiwan
Prof. Sarina Hui-Lin Chien is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research bridges perceptual development, face processing, and early cognitive mechanisms across the lifespan. Her scholarly work, reflected in 32 peer-reviewed publications, over 307 citations, and an h-index of 12, demonstrates strong and sustained contributions to understanding how humans interpret, encode, and respond to complex visual and social information. A major theme in her research involves the developmental trajectory of face perception, including sensitivity to identity, race, emotional expressions, and trait inferences. She has conducted extensive studies examining how infants, children, and adults categorize faces, perceive trustworthiness, and discriminate subtle facial cues. This work extends to populations with atypical development, such as individuals with autism spectrum characteristics, providing insights into perceptual and social cognitive variability. Her investigations also contribute significantly to perceptual organization and early visual cognition, including studies on topological and geometric properties, visual short term memory, and the mechanisms underlying perceptual narrowing. By integrating behavioral methods, psychophysics, and eye tracking, she advances multi method approaches to understanding how perception evolves and adapts under different developmental and environmental conditions. Another core dimension of her scholarship explores how context, familiarity, and essentialist thinking shape visual categorization, race perception, and social preferences. This line of work intersects cognitive development with social cognition, offering a broader framework for understanding how perceptual biases emerge and change over time. Her recent projects investigate the impact of public health contexts such as mask-wearing on face recognition and emotional interpretation in children, reflecting her interest in real-world influences on cognitive development. Overall, Prof. Chien’s body of work illustrates a coherent and influential research program that deepens scientific understanding of visual cognition, developmental trajectories, and the foundations of human social perception.
Featured Publications
Ali, M., & Chien, S. H.-L. Within-person face recognition strongly correlates with objective face processing assessments: A study beyond the populations.
Lin, C.-Y., Ho, M. W.-R., & Chien, S. H.-L. Exploring face perception efficiency in patients with lacunar stroke: A study with familiar and unfamiliar face recognition.
Wang, H.-T., Lyu, J.-L., & Chien, S. H.-L. Dynamic emotion recognition and expression imitation in neurotypical adults and their associations with autistic traits. Sensors.