Xinyang (Helen) Gu
Major: Neuroscience and Behavior
Location: University of Notre Dame
Xinyang studied body-based social cues that provide crucial information about an individual’s internal state, as well as the environment around them. Her thesis examined attentional biases in response to body posture cues in social scenarios using two experiments. The results of these experiments suggest that body posture is used as an attentional cue to prioritize certain areas of space for processing, but this bias effect does not differ for individuals and groups. Additionally, attentional cueing driven by body postures does not
influence perception.
Xinyang says, "I enjoyed being with other researchers in my field. It is a very niche field, so being able to talk with other people about my research intellectually was rewarding. The most challenging aspect was not understanding all of the suggestions from the professionals since they have been in this field for decades and made very technical comments. The most surprising part was at the end when the discussion moderator congratulated me on completing my PhD thesis!"