Prof. Fan CAO

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. Northwestern University, Communication Sciences and Disorders
• Master, Beijing Normal University, Psychology
• Bachelor, Beijing Normal University, Psychology

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

• Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong
• Professor, Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
• Assistant Professor, Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. USA
• Assistant Professor, elite Nanyang Assistant Professor, Division of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Post-doctoral fellow, Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, USA

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research interests include reading development and disorders, second language learning, as well as joint attention in young children with ASD. I study these research questions as a way to understand neural plasticity. I am interested in the neural mechanisms underlying these developmental and learning disorders, as well as how brain structure and function change following behavioral intervention.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Li X*, Zuo F, Cheng Y, Perkins K, Cao F. (2026). Two clusters of brain regions with distinct sage-related profiles of functional connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (42) e2617358123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2617358123.

Yuan Y*, Zhang B, Perkins K, Cao F. (2026). Non-linear shift along the sensorimotor-associative axis in brain responses to task performance. NeuroImage. 334:121978.

Feng G*, Shen L, Shi L, Yan X, Liang Y, Zhang L, Zuo S, Wu Y, Cao F. (2025). Brain changes following two reading interventions in Chinese children with reading disability. Developmental Science. 28(4): e70038. doi: 10.1111/desc.70038.

Cao F, Yan X, Yan X, Zhou H, Booth JR. (2021) Reading disability in Chinese children learning English as an L2. Child Development. 92(2): e126-e142.

Kim S*, Qi T, Fang X, Ding G, Liu L, & Cao F. (2016). How does language distance between L1 and L2 affect the L2 brain network? An fMRI study of Korean-Chinese-English trilinguals. NeuroImage, 129, 25-39.

Cao F, Peng DL, Liu L, Jin Z, Fan N, Deng Y, & Booth JR. (2009). Developmental differences of neurocognitive networks of phonological and semantic processing in Chinese word reading. Human Brain Mapping, 30(3), 797-809.

Cao F, Bitan T, Chou TL, Burman DD & Booth JR. (2006). Deficient orthographic and phonological representations in developmental dyslexics revealed by brain activation patterns. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(10), 1041-1050.

* indicates the first author is/was a student or post-doc in my lab.

RESEARCH LABORATORY

There are several projects going on in my lab. Along the research line of reading disability, we are examining developmental changes from dyslexic children to dyslexic adults in order to understand when there is reading disability, how one develops reading both behaviorally and neurologically. We are also developing intervention programs for dyslexic children and adults with a combination of brain stimulation.  We are interested in developing a classification model to predict who will respond to the intervention and who will not using multimodal neuroimaging data. Along the research line of second language learning, we are conducting studies to understand why children have an advantage in foreign speech imitation and perception compared to adults. Along the research line of ASD, we are trying to understand why figurative language comprehension is so challenging for adolescents with ASD. We are also studying joint attention in young children with ASD using hyper-scanning with fNIRS.

RESEARCH INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

I would be more than happy to provide internship opportunities. Please contact me.