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Sau-Chin Chen

Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology

Tzu-Chi University

Biography

Sau-Chin Chen is an associate professor at the Department of Human Development and Psychology at Tzu-Chi University since 2017. From February 2016 to January 2017, he was a visiting researcher at the Department of Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, collaborating with Rolf Zwaan on mental simulation in language comprehension.

Since 2017, he has been involved with the Psychological Science Accelerator, contributing to collaborative research projects like “object orientation effects across languages”. He manages the podcast “open cafe” and leads the “Taiwan Collaboration for Psychological Scientific Research” community, aiming to promote open and reproducible sciences in Taiwan and Chinese-speaking societies.

Chen has participated in the COS Ambassador project and is a member of The Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS). He is developing Chinese tutorials on open sciences and registered reports, and is interested in evaluating and improving the quality of psycholinguistic research.

His primary research interests include language comprehension, word reading, and open sciences. He holds a PhD in Psychology from National Chung Cheng University (2004) and a BSc in Psychology from National Chengchi University (1998).

Interests

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Open Science
  • Reproducible Research
  • Statistics
  • R Programming

Education

  • PhD in Psychology, 2004

    National Chung Cheng University

  • BSc in Psychology, 1998

    National Chengchi University

Skills

R

Statistics

Psychology

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Associate Professor

Tzu-Chi University

Aug 2017 – Present Hualien, Taiwan

Responsibilities include:

  • Teaching cognitive psychology courses
  • Conducting research in open science and reproducibility
  • Supervising graduate students
 
 
 
 
 

Assistant Professor

Tzu-Chi University

Aug 2012 – Jul 2017 Hualien, Taiwan
Teaching and research in cognitive psychology.

Featured Publications

Investigating object orientation effects across 18 languages

A Psychological Science Accelerator registered report testing the object orientation effect in …
Sau-Chin Chen, Erin M. Buchanan, Zoltan Kekecs, Jeremy K. Miller, Anna Szabelska, Balazs Aczel, et al.
PDF Dataset Project DOI OSF Project

Does Object Size Matter with Regard to the Mental Simulation of Object Orientation?

Language comprehenders have been argued to mentally represent the implied orientation of objects. …
Sau-Chin Chen, de Koning B. Bjorn, Rolf A. Zwaan
PDF Source Document DOI

Recent Posts

If Emily Rosa met Thomas Bayes ...

Twenty years ago, 11-year-old Emily Rosa and her parents published a study in the Journal of the …
Mon, May 17, 2021 1 min read Teaching, Practices

Psychological Science Podcasts

There are psychological scientists who have started producing internet podcasts since 2016. Audience …
Mon, May 17, 2021 1 min read academic

Use bookdownplus write papers and manage lab logs

Since being a Rmarkdown user, I’m thinking how to write papers, manage teaching materials and …
Mon, May 17, 2021 1 min read Reproduce Practice
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Projects

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All Research Teaching Tools Community

Claude Lit Workflow

A note-app-integrated literature workflow that turns a PDF, URL, or topic into structured Markdown slides and Zettelkasten cards.

TWCC Ollama Proxy

A local Ollama-API-compatible proxy that routes LLM inference requests to TWCC CCS containers.

LSJ 2026 Lecture Slides

Lecture slides for the 2026 basic statistics course at Tzu-Chi University’s Department of Human Development and Psychology.

Learning Statistics with jamovi (Traditional Chinese Translation)

Traditional Chinese translation of Navarro and Foxcroft’s open textbook Learning Statistics with jamovi, built with Quarto.

P-CSO: Pinker’s Cognitive Style Optimization for Academic Writing

A personal English writing co-pilot for Claude Code, applying Steven Pinker’s cognitive-style principles to reduce reader effort in academic prose.

ACT_Base: Annotation-Connection-Thought Workflow for Obsidian

A minimal Obsidian vault template demonstrating the Annotation-Connection-Thought knowledge workflow, powered by Claude Code skills.

Annotation_Blank (miniverse)

A minimal Obsidian vault that converts academic PDFs into structured Annotation notes with AI-generated Zettelkasten cards.

Justify Your Alpha

A multi-author response to proposals to redefine statistical significance at p ≤ .005, arguing instead for transparent justification of alpha levels.

Investigating Object Orientation Effects Across 14 Languages

A Psychological Science Accelerator multi-lab study testing whether readers mentally simulate the orientation of objects described in sentences, across 14 languages.

EXPPSY Opensci: An Open Textbook for Experimental Psychology Methods

An open-source textbook covering experimental psychology methods, built with R Markdown and booktem.

Teaching Experimental Psychology in Taiwan

A growing OSF collection of experimental psychology course projects taught at Tzu-Chi University across multiple years.

Basic Statistics for Psychological Science (OSF Companion)

Demonstration materials and exercise modules on OSF, companion resources to the online statistics textbook for psychological science.

Translation Project: Improving Your Statistical Inferences

A collaborative Chinese translation project for Daniël Lakens' Coursera course, making its statistical inference materials available to Chinese-speaking learners.

Mental Simulation in Reading Sentence

When we are reading the sentences describing the status of objects, such as ‘The painter is cleaning his brush’, how our minds catch the details? This issue has been explored longer than a decade since the match advantages of sentence-picture verification task have been robustly replicated across shape, color, size and orientation. The sentence-picture verification task requires the participants read the sentence then verify the target picture. When the target picture match the visual feature implied by the sentence, the reponses are usually faster than the pictures that mismatch the implied visual feature.

Contact

  • 67 Jieren St, Hualien City, 97004