Shimin Hu

I started being fascinated by child psychology and learning when I went to Sri Lanka to take part in an international volunteer organization to help orphans with Parkinson’s syndrome and cerebral palsy with physical therapy and language study. I was deeply impressed by the strong learning motivation of these children, even when confronting real-world difficulties. After that, I decided to be a volunteer teacher teaching languages and mathematics in a primary school for children of low-income families on weekends during my college life. I also liked to play with children after class and tried to answer all of their questions. However, sometimes I found it hard to answer their questions or I struggled to understand why they did not understand my answers. For instance, they may ask why ‘1+1=2’. The answer is so obvious to most adults, but kids may stick to this problem and feel anxious. This experience had a profound effect in changing my academic goal from my undergraduate major in Business Economics (theories based on the assumption that all individuals are behaving rationally) to my master’s major in Behavioral Science (romantic definition-when Psychology and Economics got “Married”, the product was Behavioral Science).

I was lucky enough to be admitted to the Psychological and Behavioral Science Department of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where I learned systematic knowledge of behavioral science and psychology, as well as experimental designing methods and quantitative applications. This specialized knowledge lays a solid foundation for my future work and research. However, until this time, I was still unsure what my life goals are and whether I am motivated enough to continue my studies and apply for a Ph.D.

To find answers to these questions, I spent the next two years working in the industry after my master’s study at LSE. I have worked as a project manager of the biggest online game company in the world and a product manager of AI cognitive and natural language processing (NLP). My work responsibility was to analyze data from consumer historical behaviors and build computational models in order to induce consumers to purchase more, which made me feel demoralized because I didn’t want to set my pursuit to exploit consumer psychology to increase people’s purchases and create higher commercial revenue for monopolies. I hope I can use psychology and behavioral intervention to contribute to meaningful work, such as helping children and adults with cognitive development through behavioral interventions. In addition, I hope to endeavor myself to understand children’s cognitive development with theoretical knowledge. Therefore, I chose to quit the job and then prepare for a Ph.D. in cognitive development instead.

I am currently volunteering at the lab of NIE Child Development Studies with Dr. Yue Yu at Nanyang Technological University and took part in the research of KidsSTOP project in order to prepare me as a qualified Ph.D. candidate for Child Cognitive Development in the future.