About Me

I am currently an Assistant Professor (Limited Term) in the Department of Psychology at Trent University. My research intersects psychology, linguistics, speech-language pathology, and computer science, employing a big data approach to explore language and cognition. Through computational modeling (e.g., distributional semantics, network science) and empirical data collection, I investigate how linguistic experience influences language representation and processing across aging.

Education

University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY

Ph.D., Communicative Disorders and Sciences (Cognitive Science Track)
2016–2023
Dissertation: The Information Accumulation Perspective of Cognitive Aging: Further Evidence and New Measurement
Advisors: Nichol Castro; Brendan T. Johns

M.S., Computational Linguistics/Natural Language Processing
2018–2019
M.S. Project: Artificial Error Generation with Fluency Filtering
Advisor: Jungyeul Park

M.A., General Linguistics
2013–2016
M.A. Project: Verb Aspect and the Activation of Location Information
Advisor: Jean-Pierre Koenig

B.A., Psychology & Linguistics (Honors in Language and Cognition)
2010–2013
Honors Thesis: Personifications in Mandarin and English: A Comparative Perspective
Advisor: Jean-Pierre Koenig
Summa Cum Laude; Minor in Sociology

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Qiu, M., Castro, N., & Johns, B. T. (2021). Structural comparisons of noun and verb networks in the mental lexicon. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1649-1655).

Qiu, M., & Johns, B. T. (2020). Semantic diversity in paired-associate learning: Further evidence for the information accumulation perspective of cognitive aging. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27(1), 114-121.

Qiu, M., & Park, J. (2019). Artificial error generation with fluency filtering. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (pp. 87-91).

Qiu, M., Chen, X., Liu, M., Parvathala, K., Patil, A., & Park, J. (2019). Improving precision of grammatical error correction with a cheat sheet. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (pp. 240-245).

Conference Presentations and Posters

Qiu, M., & Castro, N. (2021, October). Comparing semantic networks of early vocabulary across languages. Talk to be presented at Complexity and Cognition: Satellite Symposium at the Conference on Complex Systems 2021.

Qiu, M. (2020, November). Using natural language processing for language sample analysis. Proposal accepted at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Diego, CA (Convention canceled).

Sun, S., & Qiu, M. (2020, November). Early production of animal vocabulary in Mandarin Chinese and American English. Proposal accepted at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Diego, CA (Convention canceled).

Qiu, M., & Johns, B. T. (2018, November). Memory searching pathway underlying verb fluency. Poster presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Boston, MA.

Min, H., Guo, L., Higginbotham, D. J., & Qiu, M. (2018, November). How does writing medium influence the operation of writing processes and writing quality? Poster presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Boston, MA.