Hi there!

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Reiko Mazuka at RIKEN CBS Laboratory for Language Development (previously at Dr. Krista Byers-Heinlein's Concordia Infant Research Laboratory). My main research interests are centered around infant language development, bilingualism, and cross-cultural/cross-language differences. I am particularly interested in studying how differences in language environment influence early language development.

One thing I enjoy doing in research is analyzing and visualizing data. Often time I’m amazed by what the data tells us about language development in infants.

On a side note, I am also multilingual. Growing up in Hong Kong, I speak Cantonese, English, and Mandarin Chinese; I also learned Japanese since teenage years.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions relating to my research.

Rachel :)

You can take a look at my CV here.

Interests
  • Infant speech perception
  • Early language development
  • Bilingualism
  • Cross-cultural differences
  • Language dominance / Parental language input
  • Lexical tones and intonation
  • Data visualization
Education

  • PhD in Speech and Hearing Sciences, 2019

    The University of Hong Kong

  • MA in Linguistics, 2014

    The University of Hong Kong

  • BA in Japanese Language and Literature & Linguistics (double-major), 2013

    University of California, Berkeley

Research Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Postdoctoral researcher
RIKEN CBS Laboratory for Language Development
Feb 2021 – Present Wako, Saitama, Japan

Cross-cultural research on infant language and social skill development supervised by Dr. Reiko Mazuka

  • A large-scale international collaboration project including 6 countries
  • Online international seminar series working with overseas speakers
 
 
 
 
 
Postdoctoral fellow
Concordia Infant Research Lab
Sep 2019 – Jan 2021 Montreal, QC, Canada

Bilingual infant language development research supervised by Dr. Krista Byers-Heinlein

  • A computational model study looking at how bilingual infants learn translation equivalent (e.g., “apple” in English and “pomme” in French refers to the same fruit)
  • A longitudinal online study which tracks vocabulary development in bilingual infants
  • An online tablet study which I coded and programmed to test bilingual children’s vocabulary learning
  • A longitudinal international collaboration project with Princeton University
  • Co-supervising an honor undergraduate student with Dr. Byers-Heinlein
 
 
 
 
 
Doctoral researcher
Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, The University of Hong Kong
Sep 2015 – Aug 2019 Hong Kong
  • Infant language development study looking at how Cantonese-learning infants under the age of 12 months acquire their native lexical tonese
  • Cantonese intonation study with Cantonese-speaking adults
  • Phonetic study with Cantonese-English bilingual adults / English-learning school-aged children

Projects

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All Bilingualism Lexical tones International collaboration
The effect of Language switching on bilingual toddlers' word learning
An online asynchronous tablet experiment.
The effect of Language switching on bilingual toddlers' word learning
JEWEL project
Joint East-West Early Language Project at RIKEN CBS.
JEWEL project
Cognate advantage in bilingual infants
Longitudinal evidence from French-English bilingual infants of 16-30 months
Cognate advantage in bilingual infants
Are translation equivalents special?
Evidence from simulations and empirical data from bilingual infants
Are translation equivalents special?
Bilingual Families Project
Collaboration between Concordia Infant Research lab and Princeton Baby Lab
Bilingual Families Project
Development of tone perceptions in Cantonese-learning infants
Investigating whether all lexical tones are treated as equal by native tone-learning infants
Development of tone perceptions in Cantonese-learning infants

Recent Talks

Presentations made at international conferences

Translation equivalents aren't special in bilingual vocabulary development: A quantitative model
Here we present a novel approach that models translation equivalent knowledge as a function of bilinguals’ own vocabulary size in each language. Our novel insight is that learning a translation equivalent pair can be described as the joint probability of learning each of the words in the pair.
Nov 6, 2021 The 46th Boston University Conference on Language Development
Rachel K.Y. Tsui, Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, Esther Schott, & Krista Byers-Heinlein
Project Slides Video
Translation equivalents aren't special in bilingual vocabulary development: A quantitative model
Bilingual infants learn cognates more rapidly than non-cognates
Our findings revealed that form-similar cognates are produced more readily in bilingual infant vocabulary development than non-cognate translation equivalents: effects are small at younger ages, and grow over time.
Nov 5, 2021 The 46th Boston University Conference on Language Development
Lori Mitchell, Rachel K.Y. Tsui, & Krista Byers-Heinlein
PDF Project Video
Bilingual infants learn cognates more rapidly than non-cognates
A multi-lab study of gaze-following development in monolingual and bilingual infants
Using a multi-lab collaborative approach, we investigated whether language experience could affect the development of gaze-following. Independent of monolingual or bilingual status, early gaze-following development is significantly modulated by age-related changes.
Jul 7, 2020 The 2020 Virtual International Congress of Infant Studies
Rachel K.Y. Tsui, Rachel Barr, Alexis Black, Anna Brown, Samantha Durrant, Anja Gampe, Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez, Mikolaj Hernik, Marianna Jartó, Ágnes Melinda Kovács, Alexandra Laoun-Rubenstein, Casey Lew-Williams, Ulf Liszkowski, Liquan Liu, Claire Noble, Christine Potter, Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo, Leher Singh, Melanie Soderstrom, Daan van Renswoude, Ingmar Visser, Connor Waddell, Stephanie Wermelinger, & Krista Byers-Heinlein
PDF Video
A multi-lab study of gaze-following development in monolingual and bilingual infants

Featured Publications

Rachel K.Y. Tsui, Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, Esther Schott, Krista Byers-Heinlein
June 2021 PsyArXiv
Are translation equivalents special? Evidence from simulations and empirical data from bilingual infants

Study 1 explored patterns of translation equivalent learning under a novel computational model — the Bilingual Vocabulary Model — which quantifies translation equivalent knowledge as a function of the probability of learning words in each language, and includes a bias parameter that varies the difficulty of learning translation equivalents according to each account. Study 2 tested model-derived predictions against vocabulary data from 200 French–English bilingual children aged 18–33 months.
PDF Code Project DOI

Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
Rodrigo Dal Ben, Melanie Brouillard, Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, Hilary Killam, Lena V. Kremin, Erin Quirk, Andrea Sander-Montant, Esther Schott, Rachel K.Y. Tsui, Krista Byers-Heinlein (2021). How open science can benefit bilingualism research: A lesson in six tales. PsyArXiv.

PDF DOI

Krista Byers-Heinlein, Rachel K.Y. Tsui, Daan van Renswoude, Alexis Black, Rachel Barr, Anna Brown, Samantha Durrant, Anja Gampe, Nayeliz Gonzalez-Gomez, Jessica Hay, Mikołaj Hernik, Marianna Jart, Agnes-Melinda Kovacs, Alexandra Laoun-Rubenstein, CaseyLew-Williams, Ulf Liszkowski, LiquanLiu, Claire Noble, Christine E. Potter, Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo, Nuria Sebastian-Galles, Melanie Soderstrom, Ingmar Visser, Connor Waddell, Stephanie Wermelinger, Leher Singh (2020). The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study. infancy, 26(1), 4-38.

PDF Cite Code Dataset DOI

Rachel K.Y. Tsui, Xiuli Tong, Chan Siu Ki Chan (2019). Impact of language dominance on phonetic transfer in Cantonese–English bilingual language switching. Applied Psycholinguistics, 40(1), 29-58.

PDF Cite DOI

See all publications

Contact

  • rachelkytsui [at] gmail.com
  • Laboratory for Language Development,
    RIKEN Center for Brain Science,
    Information Science Building,
    2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi,
    Saitama, Japan 351-0198