 |
WEI Ran |
| Assistant Professor | |
| ranwei@pku.edu.cn |
Dr. Ran Wei is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Education, Peking University. Her research program, situated at the intersection of developmental psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and early childhood education, adopts an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach. It aims to understand how early language and cognitive development unfolds in diverse societies, cultures, and languages. Her present research endeavors include: 1) elucidating the neural networks that support young children's language and executive function development; 2) examining how factors in the home environment, particularly caregiver communicative input and beliefs, foster language and executive function development, especially amidst early adversity and in under-resourced settings; and 3) creating effective AI-assisted interventions to support parents from varied socioeconomic backgrounds in nurturing their children's learning and development. Dr. Wei utilizes a diverse array of methods and approaches, including eye-tracking, EEG, behavioral experiments, linguistic analysis of verbal and nonverbal interactions, and LENA. She is dedicated to transforming research findings into culturally attuned insights for parents, educators, and the broader community.
· Developmental and Educational Psychology
· Child Language Acquisition
· Cognitive Development
· Family and Socio-Cultural Environmental Factors
· Early Socialization Process
· Eye-Tracking and EEG Research Methods
Wei, R., Harris, P., Snow, C., & Rowe, M. (2025). From the “here and now” to the “there and then”: How parent-child decontextualized conversations support early development. Developmental Review.
Hua, Z. +, Li, T., Shi, R., Wei, R.*, & Li, Y*. (2025). Prediction efficiency and incremental processing strategy during spoken language comprehension in autistic children: An eye-tracking study. Molecular Autism. (*Joint senior authorship)
Sullivan, E., Wei, R., Kakon, S., Shama, T., Petri, W.A., Haque, R., Nelson, C. (2025). EEG theta power in Bangladeshi children: Associations with early experiences and cognitive outcomes. Child Development. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/cdev.14245.
Hua, Z. +, Li, T., Shi, R., Wei, R.*, & Yi, L.* (2025). Activation of thematic and taxonomic relations during lexical-semantic processing in autistic children: Evidence from eye movements. Autism Research. (*Joint senior authorship)
Wei, R., Sullivan, E., Begum, F., Rahman, N., Tofail, F., Haque, R., & Nelson, C. (2024). Parental communicative input as a protective factor in Bangladeshi families living in poverty: A multi-dimensional perspective. Developmental Science, E13494. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13494
Wei, R., Kirby, A., Naigles, L., & Rowe, M. (2022). Parents’ use of generics with infants: Stability, variability, and implications for language development. Journal of Child Language, 50(5), 1204-1225.
Ronfard, S.*, Wei, R.*, & Rowe, M. (2021). Uncovering the linguistic, social, and cognitive skills underlying processing efficiency as measured by the looking-while-listening paradigm. Journal of Child Language, 49(2), 302-325. (*Joint first and senior authorship)
Wei, R., Leech, K., & Rowe, M. (2020). Decontextualized language use during American and Chinese caregiver-child interactions. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 71, 101214.
Wei, R., Ronfard, S., Leyva, D., & Rowe, M. (2019). Teaching a novel word: Parenting styles and toddlers’ word learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 187, 104639.
Learn More：https://www.gse.pku.edu.cn/szdw/jxkyry/jyjzx/1051jyxy152820.htm