Dr Liu’s research focuses on the major areas of children’s learning and development in early childhood. She has three inter-related areas of research. In one line of her research, she is interested in how children’s affective, cognitive, and linguistic skills contribute to young children’s acquisition of reading and writing skills in Chinese as a first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2), including those with learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia). Another line of her research concerns how home literacy environment is associated with children’s language and literacy skills in young children across contexts, particularly in low-to-middle socioeconomic families. Last, she is also interested in the interplay between children’s cognition and language skills and their number learning and arithmetic competence.

Dr Liu obtained her PhD degree in Early Childhood Education from the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). Before joining PolyU, she was an RGC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Child and Family Science at EdUHK. Dr Liu’s work appeared in renowned international journals, including Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and Learning and Individual Differences.

• PhD in Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong

• MEd in Preschool Education, Shaanxi Normal University