Prof. PENG Gang received his Ph.D. in Language Engineering from City University of Hong Kong in 2002. Before he joined the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies in 2016, he worked at the

• Language Engineering Laboratory (LEL) at City University of Hong Kong (LEL moved to the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2004);
• the Signal, Speech and Language Interpretation Lab at the University of Washington;
• the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at University of Hong Kong;
• again LEL at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Prof. Peng has been awarded a series of external competitive grants: five General Research Fund (GRF) grants (Grant # 448413, 14408914, 15607518, 15610321, and 15617425) of Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (RGC), three grants (Grant # 11074267, 11474300, and 11974374) of the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and recently a prestigious grant (Grant # RFS2122-5H01) of RGC Research Fellow Scheme (RFS) 2021/2022. Moreover, he has additionally taken care of another two GRF grants (Grant # 14411314 and 15608318) originally awarded to other colleagues.

Doctoral students supervised since he joined PolyU in 2016 are as follows:

Prof. Peng's central focus is to investigate how language is represented and processed in the human brain, and how different cultures, reflected in their languages, shape perception differently. He adopts a broad multidisciplinary perspective for the study of language and the brain, with primary focus on the two most distinct features of Chinese language, i.e., lexical tones and logographic script. His research team has been investigating speech mechanisms of typically developing children and atypically developing children — children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since around 2015. Moreover, his team is also researching on novel speech intervention methods for children with ASD. Some of the representative articles are listed below in four categories:

Development of fine-grained speech perception of typically developing children (# denotes student author, and * denotes corresponding author)

1. Weng, Y., Rong, Y., & Peng, G*. (2024). The development of audiovisual speech perception in Mandarin‐speaking children: Evidence from the McGurk paradigm. Child Development, 95(3), 750-765. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14022
2. Feng, Y.^# & Peng, G.* (2023). Development of categorical speech perception in Mandarin-speaking children and adolescents. Child Development, 94(1), 28-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13837
3. Chen, F.^#, Peng, G.*, Yan, N., & Wang, L. (2017). The development of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in four-to seven-year-old children. Journal of Child Language, 44(6), 1413-1434. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000916000581

Speech perception of children with ASD:

1. Rong, Y.^#, Weng, Y.^#, Chen, F., & Peng, G.* (2022). Categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones in language-delayed autistic children. Autism. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221138687 
2. Chen, F.^#, & Peng, G.* (2021). Categorical perception of pitch contours and voice onset time in Mandarin-speaking adolescents with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(11), 4468-4484.  https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00725
3. Chen, F.^#, Zhang, H., Ding, H., Wang, S., Peng, G., & Zhang, Y. (2021). Neural coding of formant‐exaggerated speech and nonspeech in children with and without autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research, 14(7), 1357-1374.  https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2509

Speech production of children with ASD

1. Feng, Y.^#, Chen, F.^#, Ma, J., Wang, L., & Peng, G.* (2022). Production of Mandarin consonant aspiration and monophthong in children with autism spectrum disorders. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2022.2099302
2. Chen, F. ^#, Cheung, C. C. H., & Peng, G.* (2022). Linguistic tone and non-linguistic pitch imitation in children with autism spectrum disorders: A cross-linguistic investigation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(5), 2325-2343.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05123-4

Speech intervention methods for children with ASD

1. Yan, J., Chen, F.^#, Gao, X., & Peng, G. (2021). Auditory-motor mapping training facilitates speech and word learning in tone language–speaking children with autism: An early efficacy study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 64(12), 4664-4681.  https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00029
2. Chen, F.^#, Wang, L., Peng, G.*, Yan, N., & Pan, X. (2019). Development and evaluation of a 3-D virtual pronunciation tutor for children with autism spectrum disorders. PLoS One, 14(1), e0210858.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210858