Ph.D. Candidate

Chenxiao is a PhD candidate under the supervision of. Dr. Michiel van Elk and. Dr. Marret Noorderwier at the Cognitive Psychology Unit, Leiden University. She has obtained a Master’s degree in Psychology from Zhejiang Normal University in China. During her Master’s degree, she focused on how visual information is stored in working memory. Now she switches her attention to the awe experience, self-perception, attention, and psychedelics.

Chenxiao’s current research is about the psychological and neurocognitive effects of awe experiences on self-perception, especially on the possibility of distinguishing different types of awe (e.g., positive awe, threatening awe). Also, she is interested in whether attention is altered when processing the surrounding information (i.e., visual attention) during the awe experience.