Scholarship / SOP for exchange students scholarship (COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE) [2]

Statement of Purpose (A revised version)

With the advance of technology and the progress of machinery, people are surrounded by a more elaborated environment. Hence, how to develop the most efficient machinery and how to make people interact with the environment more effectively are most scientists concerns. However, without the fundamental knowledge of how human minds operate and how people interact with the machinery, the researchers may be overwhelmed by such complicated phenomena. My academic background is cognitive neuroscience. It is a subject exploring the mechanisms and the processes between human minds and behaviors. Being a member of Action and Cognition Laboratory, my researches focus on how the related brain mechanism operates when people are doing the spatial navigation tasks. In particularly, I am much interested in the role of hippocampus when it binding the information for memory formation and spatial navigation. While the explorations of the related brain mechanisms in navigation contribute to the interpretation of the phenomena, we need to implement and develop applications that incorporates such knowledge into machinery to further enhance the capability for researches in order to take advantage of these theories. This is the reason why I am interested in becoming an exchange student to learn more about Applied Experimental and Human Factors Psychology in University of Central Florida.

I was graduated in National PPP University of Education and majored in Educational psychology and counseling. Counseling, psychology, and education were my three main domains. The counseling courses helped me understanding myself better and it greatly widen my perspectives. While in counseling, both positive and negative occurrences have been the nutrition that nourished me to be who I am now. The education courses not only enhanced my teaching skills but also helped me become an much effective teacher. Last but most importantly, the psychology courses opened the window for me and made me determined to continue my study in cognitive neuroscience. At my junior year of college I took a course of topical seminar in psychology. In one of the term paper requirements, we had to implement and modify the variables used in a high level cognition research in cognitive psychology and conduct the experiment ourselves. At that time, I chose a research on "decision frames" that is published by Tversky and Kahneman. While conducting the experiment, it not only improved my experimental skills much more from designing the stimulus, recruiting the participants, conducting the experiment, analyzing the data, writing up the procedures and other documents, but also make me discovered my interests in doing researches. As a result, I am much determined to continue my study of cognitive neuroscience.

After I graduated from college and accomplished a one-year teacher internship in elementary school, I had an opportunity to work as a research assistant for Dr. XXX and Dr. YYY in their social cognition laboratory. During my work with them, I have encountered a lot of research topics regarding to social psychology and social neuroscience. Many of my participated projects also helped me enriched my experiences through these researching experiments. For instance, in the retrieval-induced forgetting theory that is proposed by Anderson and other researchers, I not only learned their theory, but also experienced everything that they had gone through while I preparing and conducting the experiment myself. Through planning and organizing the process of the experiment, I had to prepare all materials needed at different stages and to write up the standard operating procedures for all experimenters to follow. Such process made me much familiar with every tiny details that needed to be concerned during the experiment. While conducting the Zhong-Yong experiment, we found that for people with high Zhong-Yong scores, they are generally much rounded in personality. They take things passively but are much organized. On the other hand, people with lower Zhong-Yong scores are much responsive. They take things aggressively but could be less organized. Surprisingly, we discover that the cultural differences also contribute the change to a person's Zong-Yong scores. Hence we could not apply the experiment result globally but need bind it specifically to the region where the experiment is performed, but need to bind it specifically to the region where the experiment is performed. In the Gender subject stereotype project, I not only understood where the self-report questionnaires limitations are but also realized that implicit association test (IAT) can be used to assess ones' implicit attitudes. For the new category norm project, I had to implement and conduct the experiment on my own. During the process of the experiment, I had to collect 203 participants' data, edit and organize the files that were being collected, merge the files that have the same concept, compare my result to In-Mao Liu's and to analyze the differences among them. Also, while conducting the experiments, I learned many useful software that are being used in psychology such as E-prime and DMDX. I really appreciate the opportunities that these teachers had given me and very grateful that they had guided me step by step into researches. Under their guidance, I had my first experience submitting my writing into academia. In September 2009, Dr. YYY and I submitted a poster for the poster session presented at the annual meeting of TTT Psychological Association. These research experiences have cultivated my critical thinking and problem solving capabilities and have become my solid foundation for conducting independent studies under the guidance of my advisors.

With my self-study on gaining the industrial knowledge and my working experiences on conducting various experiments with many researchers, I am admitted to the program of Institute of Neuroscience in National MMM University. I am participated in the Action and Cognition Laboratory that is conducted by EEE. He is an assistant professor of Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in National CCC University, which is one of our academic cooperation groups. Under his direction, I am working on a project that examines the role of hippocampus in binding information for memory formation and spatial navigation. To find out what process would activate different pairs of human hippocampus when it respond to the change in different pair-wise binding of spatial, temporal, and content information is I am mostly interested in. In order to accomplish that, I have probed in the behavioral experiment, virtual-reality technique, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique. However, the application of neuroimaging technique requires the participants to be immobilized for long period of time whereas the investigation of the spatial navigation cognition requires the participants to be constantly in motion, such contradict requirements present a unique challenge in designing of the experiments. Fortunately, we are able to resolve this conflict by taking the advantages of the virtual-reality technique. This approach takes the assumption that the virtual-reality experience is sufficiently realistic to engage the same cognitive mechanisms in both behavioral and neural that are employed in the similar real-world tasks. Nevertheless, there are still many issues require exploring in the application of the virtual-reality techniques. At current state, there is a gap between the development and the application of the virtual-reality techniques. It is usually those who develop the techniques do not have the in-depth understanding of how human mind operates and how the operation of human minds interact with the machinery. Therefore, their experimental designs of the experiment can only be phenomenal categorized. On the other hand, those who apply the virtual-reality techniques to their experimental paradigms may not conceive the probable influences on their results by different levels of the applications. As I come across the Applied Experimental and Human Factor Psychology in University of Central Florida, I have found it very applicable to apply the technology onto the researches that I have been doing and able to satisfy the research questions that I may have. The faculties in the Applied Experimental and Human Factor Psychology program have great in-depth knowledge of how human minds operate. I also share the similar interests with Professor SSS, Professor HHH, and their teams. I believe with my strong motivation in learning along with my research experiences I have much to offer. With the abundant academic resources provided by UCF and great research team I have faith that this will be a fruitful journey.

Scholarship / "Once I have a dream" - An autobiography for exchange students scholarship [3]

Self-Introduction

"Once I have a dream, I must strive to pursue." This sentence is the best description of the pursuing of my music dream and interests. When I was in preschool, I always admired those who can play the piano. However, the tuition was too expensive to afford for my family, so I did not learn how to play the piano at that time. Nevertheless, I made up my mind to achieve this music dream by myself in the future.

My first chance to approach my dream came when I went to senior high school. Extracurricular activities are another important learning for senior high school students. I took part in the challenging band. Besides the music courses in the school and playing recorder, I never received any extracurricular music education, but my music dream drive me to tackle the up coming challenges. I told myself: I might not be the one who play the music instrument the best, but I must be the one who pay the most efforts. I was an oboist and I encountered many difficulties while practicing. For example, my breath was not long enough to play the whole phrase, my absolute or relative pitch was not accurate enough, complicated fingering and my poor sight-reading abilities. However, I did my best to practice, consulted my classmates and the teachers, repeatedly listened the music to be familiar with them, and memorized all the songs we played and their corresponding fingerings. Ultimately, I could play these songs as well and attended to many contests and concerts. In my two-year career in the band, the improvements of my music abilities are my great harvest. Furthermore, ever more rare are that I learned how to strike a balance between the pressure of advancing to a higher school and the pursuit of my dream; to know the shortcomings of myself while tumbling down, to facing and to overcome the difficulties; how to make use of my limited time and energy; and how to cope with the pressure. I also discovered that through annealing, people have unlimited fighting spirit, perseverance and potential can be excited out. What is more, I got a number of togetherness.

Joining the chorus club in my college years was the second practice of my music dream. From my oboe learning experiences and difficulties, I thought to develop accurate sense of pitch is the foundation of other music abilities, so I joined the chorus club and as a member of alto. Unlike the past, besides practicing the alto part, I also learned how to manage a club. I was the convener of a big school activity in my sophomore year. I was responsible for the assigning of work within the club, the linkages with related administrative offices in school and answering questions to the elementary school teachers who enrolled in this camp. Finally, I got the affirmation of other members in the club and was elected to be vice president of the club in my junior year. In my four-year career in the chorus club, I learned how to be a leader in a group, cultivated my communicating skills, developed tougher mind and more mature personality, and great coping strategies of pressure. Besides the chorus club experiences, I also took a lot of music courses to improve my music abilities such as voice, conducting, choral methods and materials and so forth. I waited for the chance, from preschool to senior high school, and carried out my dream with seven years.

The process that I switched my major from counseling to cognitive neuroscience wound through high peaks, but I eventually saw the light at the end of the tunnel when all the conditions were ripe. I liked biology the most when I was a senior high school student. The various biochemical mechanisms in human bodies especially fascinated me. My biology teacher would provide me some after class materials and introduce some interesting topics in cognitive neuroscience to us in class. I majored in educational psychology and counseling in my college years. The psychology courses opened the cognitive neuroscience window for me. I started to read plenty of outside materials made me access to cognitive neuroscience. The more I read, the surer of my aspiration I felt. Finally, I made up my mind switching my study to cognitive neuroscience in my junior year of college.

After graduated from college, I did a one-year internship in elementary school. Later on I worked as a research assistant in Dr. XXX and Dr. YYY's social cognition lab and prepared for the graduate school entrance examination. I knew that I did not have a relevant degree in cognitive neuroscience, so I must enlarge my background knowledge as much as possible. Besides the textbooks and the suggesting readings of the exam, I read a large number of outside materials about cognitive neuroscience and the latest news on Scientific American website. I passed the written test the year before last year, but I could not pass the interview. However, I was not discouraged. I wrote e-mails to the professors, asked for advice on how to prepare myself to be in this field and reevaluated my capability and my interest in cognitive neuroscience. As a result, besides studying the textbooks on my own, I also audited courses like statistics and methods of psychological experiments to advance my knowledge and improve my skills last year. Furthermore, I enriched my research experiences by working as a research assistant and participating myself in different conferences and workshops to receive the latest research directions in the field. Finally, I got the admission last year. As my music dream, I hibernated for four years, and I am still in practice my dream.

Although my journey of pursuing my dreams are often not very smooth, I do not particularly envy those who have a meteoric rise, because the process of struggles make my results even more precious. I am thankful to those who helped me and those who threw a wet blanket on my efforts. I felt the warmth when people helped me in my hardship. On the other hand, those who dampened my enthusiasms inspired my will to fight. No matter the positive or negative experiences were the nutrition which nourished me to be who I am now. I believe that the best rewards in my life come from hard work hard work itself.