Dr Chai Jun Ho

Dr Chai Jun Ho

  • Lecturer
  • School of Psychology
Faculty of Medical and Life Sciences
SDGs Focus

Biography

Dr Chai Jun Ho is a lecturer in the School of Psychology, Faculty of Medical and Life Sciences at ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University. His research interest lies in early language development, with expertise in assessing infant and toddler vocabulary acquisition, eye-tracking, naturalistic recordings, and computational modeling. He has developed innovative computerized vocabulary assessments for multilingual settings and published on topics including child language acquisition, caregiver-child naturalistic interactions, learning mechanisms of language and the impact of socio-cultural and socio-economic factors on child development.

He collaborates internationally in both research and teaching, including the Korea HK3.0 project focused on early language acquisition and cognitive development across the lifespan, where he contributes to research and scholar training through multisensory data analysis and computational modeling. He also takes part in the ManyBabies consortium, an open science initiative dedicated to transparency and replicable research in global, multi-lab studies on infant cognition.
 

Academic & Professional Qualifications

  • PhD in Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK (2022)
  • BSc (Hons) Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK (2016)

Research Interests

  • Word learning and vocabulary development in infants and toddlers
  • Assessment and computational modeling of early language abilities
  • Caregiver-child naturalistic interactions and conversational dynamics
  • Eye-tracking and multimodal methods in developmental research

Teaching Areas

  • Developmental Research
  • Statistical Methods

Notable Publications

  1. Chai, J. H., Jung, J., & Ko, E-S (2025).The dynamics of initiation in caregiver–child
    conversational interactions.

  2. Kim, M., Shim, M., Chai, J. H., Ko, E. S., & Lee, Y. (2025). Lookee: Gaze Tracking-based Infant Vocabulary Comprehension Assessment and Analysis. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-15).  

  3. Chai, J. H., Low, H. M., Wong, T. P., Onnis, L., & Mayor, J. (2021). Extra-linguistic modulation of the English noun-bias: Evidence from Malaysian bilingual infants and toddlers. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 5, 49–64.

  4. Lo, C. H., Rosslund, A., Chai, J. H., Mayor, J., & Kartushina, N. (2021). Tablet assessment of word comprehension reveals coarse word representations in 18-20-month-old toddlers. Infancy.

  5. Chai, J. H., Lo, C. H., & Mayor, J. (2020). A Bayesian-Inspired Item Response Theory–Based framework to produce very short versions of Macarthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(10), 3488–3500.
     

Achievements & Accolades

  1. 2025 – 2031: Collaborator, HK 3.0 Program - Ministry of Education and National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) – (KRW 4.8 billion / approx. USD $3,500,000) 
    Project Title: Language, Cognition, and Society: A Lifespan Data-Driven Approach. PI: Dr. Eon-Suk Ko, Chosun University

  2. 2025 – 2026: Co-Lead Investigator, ManyBabies 5 Project (USD $2,500 / approx. RM10,617.50) 
    Project Title: ManyBabies 5 –  The Hunter & Ames Model of Infant Looking Preference.
    Co-Lead Investigator: Dr. Woo Pei Jun, ºìÐÓÊÓƵ University