Research Overview

My research sits at the intersection of clinical psychology, affective neuroscience, and computational methods. I study how people perceive their own bodies and emotions — and how the gap between actual and perceived feeling relates to anxiety, depression, and social cognition. My current work focuses on interoceptive metacognition as a transdiagnostic mechanism underlying emotional disorders.

Outside of research, I enjoy reading and writing literature, photography, fashion, and playing video games.

InteroceptionAffective NeuroscienceComputational PsycholinguisticsClinical Psychology
News
Jul 2026
Revision
ARR reviews received — withdrawing short paper this cycle to resubmit as long paper for the next.
Jun 2026
New Role
Joined Shanghai AI Laboratory as RA for AI4BioSci / SciForge — contributing to verification-oriented scientific-agent infrastructure.
May 2026
New Role
Joined Yonsei Clinical & Affective Neuroscience Lab (Dr. Juyeon Hur / 허주연) as RA — studying interoception and vulnerability mechanisms in anxiety and depression.
Earlier …
Dec 2025
Poster
Presented "Predicting Next-Day Suicidal Urges, Depression, and PTSD Symptoms Using EMA and Passive Sensing" at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Convention.
Nov 2025
New Role
Joined University of Pennsylvania (Penn Medicine) as RA — building multimodal clinical emotion recognition pipelines for 3,000+ psychotherapy videos.
Oct 2025
New Role
Joined Stanford Psychophysiology Lab as RA — developing reproducible R pipelines for 10,000+ EMA and sleep diary records.
Sep 2025
Leave
Took leave of absence — returned home to recover, cared for grandpa and cat Guagua 🐱
Sep 2025
Publication
JASP paper published — "Underestimating Others' Positive Attitude Toward AI Reduces Intentions to Adopt AI in Various Business Contexts" in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (56(6), 443-456).
Jan 2025
Exchange
Exchange at Washington University in St. Louis — joined Speech & Hearing Lab; started clinical shadowing at CID and IDDRC.
Oct 2024
Publication
BJSP paper published — "Perceived Economic Inequality Inhibits Pro-Environmental Engagement" in the British Journal of Social Psychology (64(2), e12815).
Aug 2024
Poster
Presented "Neural Fatigue From Speech Perception in Noise and Social Withdrawal" at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Brain and Mind Institute.
Experience
Stanford Psychophysiology Lab
Research Assistant; PIs: James Gross, Ph.D.; mentored by Maia ten Brink, Ph.D.
  • Built splsleep, a CI-tested R package for 10,000+ EMA/sleep diary records with human-in-the-loop CSV audit trail.
  • Synthesized literature on interoception, psychophysiology, and emotion dynamics.
Penn Medicine · University of Pennsylvania
Research Assistant; mentored by Tao Lin, Ph.D.
  • Prototyped Python pipeline extracting facial/acoustic features from 3,000+ therapy videos.
  • Screened 20+ clinical studies via Covidence on therapeutic skills and outcomes.
Yonsei Univ. · Clinical & Affective Neuroscience Lab
Research Assistant; PI: Juyeon Hur, Ph.D.
  • Assisting clinical and affective neuroscience research on anxiety, depression, and vulnerability mechanisms using fMRI and ML methods.
  • Performed fMRI data quality assurance, including motion check, artifact detection, and preprocessing pipeline validation.
Shanghai AI Laboratory
AI4BioSci / SciForge Research Assistant; PI: Zhangyang Gao, Ph.D.
  • Maintain and QA an open-source human-oversight platform for research agents (Electron/TypeScript): issue triage, regression testing, schema refactoring.
  • Designed a cross-repository collaboration testing protocol (~750 lines) and audited the Coordinator–Cloud–Worker loop on real case scenarios.
  • Researched verifier benchmarks and agent-evaluation literature to inform the platform's evidence-audit design.
  • Coordinating case-study materials from student contributors for the team's technical report (in preparation).
WashU Speech & Hearing Lab
Research Assistant; PIs: Mitchell Sommers, Ph.D.; Joe Barcroft, Ph.D.
  • Built IPA coding scheme quantifying lexical difficulty for bilingual phonological permeability research.
  • Designed L1 vocabulary-learning experiments; recorded audio stimuli; assisted R statistical validation.
Zhejiang Univ. of Science and Technology · Social Psychology Lab
Long-Term Research Assistant; PI: Sijing Chen, Ph.D.
  • Supported multi-method studies on inequality, AI credibility, and pro-environmental behavior.
  • Built R/Python workflows for regression, mediation, ANOVA, and PsychoPy experiments.
Chinese University of Hong Kong · Brain and Mind Institute
Research Assistant; PI: Xin Zhou, Ph.D.
  • Assisted fNIRS hyperscanning experiments; preprocessed data and learned inter-brain coherence analysis.
  • Presented poster on speech-perception neural fatigue and social withdrawal.
Education
Yonsei University
B.A. in Philosophy; Minors in English Language & Literature & Applied Statistics & Cognitive Science
Expected June 2027
GPA: 3.89/4.3
Washington University in St. Louis
Exchange Student in Arts & Sciences
Jan 2025 – Jun 2025
GPA: 3.75/4.0
MGH Institute of Health Professions
Online prerequisite coursework in Speech-Language Pathology
May 2025 – Aug 2025
GPA: 4.0/4.0
Publications & Presentations
Auditory and Visual Cue Integration in L1 Vocabulary Learning
WashU Speech & Hearing Lab
Poster, TBD 2026
Investigated how L1 learners integrate auditory and visual cues during vocabulary acquisition, with implications for multimodal learning theories.
ABCT poster
Predicting Next-Day Suicidal Urges, Depression, and PTSD Symptoms Using EMA and Passive Sensing
Tao Lin, Joshua Wiley, Yiqin Zhu, Cai Dong, Mingcong Tang, Daniel J. Taylor, Kristi E. Pruiksma, Bridget Feler, Marin Kautz, Justin Baker, Lauren Khazem, Craig J. Bryan, Lily A. Brown
Poster, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Annual Convention 2025
Leveraged EMA and passive sensing data from smartphones to predict next-day clinical outcomes, demonstrating feasibility of scalable digital phenotyping for suicide risk monitoring.
JASP paper
Underestimating Others' Positive Attitude Toward AI Reduces Intentions to Adopt AI in Various Business Contexts
Rongmian Huo, Shasha Yang, Cai Dong, Sijing Chen
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2025
Demonstrated that people systematically underestimate others' AI-positive attitudes, and this underestimation reduces personal AI adoption intentions across business contexts.
BJSP paper
Perceived Economic Inequality Inhibits Pro-Environmental Engagement
Rongmian Huo, Shasha Yang, Cai Dong, Sijing Chen
British Journal of Social Psychology, 64(2), e12815 2024
Multi-study investigation showing that perceived economic inequality reduces pro-environmental behavior through decreased collective efficacy and future-oriented concern.
CUHK posterCUHK poster 2
Neural Fatigue From Speech Perception in Noise and Social Withdrawal
Cai Dong, Patrick C. M. Wong, et al.
Poster, Chinese University of Hong Kong Brain and Mind Institute 2024
fNIRS hyperscanning study showing that speech perception in noise induces neural fatigue in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus, correlating with increased social withdrawal tendencies.
Clinical, Community & Skills
Clinical observation — IDDRC, Washington University School of Medicine
Teacher Aide — Central Institute for the Deaf, WashU Medicine
Community work — Artists First; educational mentorship and sponsorship initiative
Methods — GLMM/HLM, NLP, meta-analysis
Tools — R, Python, MATLAB, SQL, Git/GitHub
Languages — Mandarin Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese
GitHub Repositories
Explore projects → github.com/cyracaid