Research

Overview

My research interests lie at the intersection of many subfields of cognitive science, including but not limited to: developmental psychology, semantics & pragmatics, philosophy of mind, etc. Below is a list of projects I have worked on, organized by topics.

Acquisition of possibility concept and language

The majority of my PhD work (namely, my dissertation) focuses on the acquisition of possibility concept and the role of language in that process. I ask: are possibility concepts the sort of concepts that have to be constructed through language learning?

Yanwan Zhu & Roman Feiman.
Toddlers use “if”, rather than “when”, to talk about mere possibilities
Manuscript under review.

Language acquisition in understudied populations

When I was an undergrad at Smith College, I worked with Jill de Villiers on a project focusing on Romani-speaking children in Europe. In our paper, in addition to presenting data on Roma children’s linguistic knowledge, we argued that studying language acquisition in understudied populations like Roma children is important, highlighting both the scientific merits and the societal implications.

Hristo Kyuchukov, Jill de Villiers, Yanwan Zhu, & Iris Zhong (2025).
Assessing the acquisition of Romani in Roma children
Language Acquisition.