Tzeng, Christina
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Preferred: christina.tzeng@sjsu.edu
Bio
Dr. Christina Tzeng earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Emory University, where she continued as a postdoctoral scholar prior to joining the Psychology Department faculty at San José State University.
Dr. Tzeng directs the Cognition of Language Processing Lab, which explores the dynamic interplay between human cognition and communication. Dr. Tzeng studies the plasticity of the perceptual system, focusing on the cognitive and social mechanisms that underlie how we understand spoken language. Spoken language is a highly complex signal that conveys information not only about objects and events in the world but also information about who is talking. Despite the vast amount of variability in the production of words across different voices and communicative contexts, listeners often understand spoken utterances with seemingly little effort. Dr. Tzeng's work seeks to understand how we achieve this feat, focusing on how listeners' knowledge, expectations, and stereotypes of who is speaking can bias what they think they hear.
Dr. Tzeng teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, including Cognition, Perception, and the Psychology of Language.