From November 22 to 24, 2024, Xiamen University successfully hosted the inaugural Language, Cognition, and Intelligence Academic Forum. The event, jointly organized by the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures (CFLC) and the university’s Language Cognition and Intelligence Lab, attracted over 800 participants from more than 70 universities nationwide.
In her opening address, CFLC Dean Professor Chen Jing highlighted the college’s century-long legacy and its commitment to transcending traditional academic boundaries. She cited the establishment of the Language Cognition and Intelligence Lab in 2023 as a significant milestone in advancing interdisciplinary research.
The forum featured eight keynote speeches exploring the theme “Native and Bilingual Development and Disorders.” Distinguished scholars presented cutting-edge research, including Professor Yang Yiming from Jiangsu Normal University on developing liberal arts laboratories through digital humanities, and Professor Yuan Boping from the University of Cambridge and Shanghai Jiao Tong University on linguistic input in second language acquisition.
Other notable presentations featured Professor Jie Chunyu from City University of Hong Kong sharing eye-tracking studies on cognitive effort in translation, and Professor Ding Guosheng from Beijing Normal University discussing neural mechanisms of language processing through brain imaging and large language models. Additional research covered syntactic development in Mandarin-speaking children and language processing in children with developmental disorders.
In his concluding remarks, Professor Zhang Hui, Director of the Language Cognition and Intelligence Lab, emphasized the critical importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing language intelligence research. The forum demonstrated strong commitment to integrating technological innovation with humanities scholarship, establishing new pathways for linguistic and cognitive studies.
