A/Prof. Dr. Lihe Huang is Vice-Chair of School Council, Deputy Director of Research Ethics Committee of School of Foreign Languages, General Secretary of Research Center for Ageing, Language and Care, and Deputy Director of Institute of Linguistics and Multimodality in Tongji University. As one of the leading young scholars in multimodal study and gerontolinguistics in China, He has published widely in multimodal pragmatics, ageing and language and foreign language education and undertaken several research projects granted by different institutions. Lihe Huang is Humboldt Fellow of Germany-based Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Honorary Postgraduate (Research Degree) Supervisor in the University of Liverpool and he conducted research at several world-class universities. He has received several honors and awards both at home and abroad for his academic and teaching performance or social service.
EDUCATION
In June 2007, Lihe Huang graduated with Bachelor Degree in English Language and Literature from English Department at Tongji University; from September 2004 to July 2006, he minored in Law at Fudan University; In March 2010, he graduated with MA Degree in Linguistics from English Department at Tongji University; In February 2016, he graduated with Doctorate in Linguistics from English Department at Tongji University. He is a visiting scholar at University of Cologne, University of Bremen, Technical University of Darmstadt, Brigham Young University, Academia Sinica and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
As one of the leading young scholars in multimodal study and gerontolinguistics in China, Lihe Huang has published widely in multimodal pragmatics, ageing and language and foreign language education and undertaken several research projects granted by different institutions.
Which dependency distance measure best reflects cognitive abilities? Evidence from oral production of older adults with varying cognitive levels Tsy Yih, Dian Ding, Yiran Che, Lihe Huang Linguistics Vanguard, 2026 Dependency distance is a widely used measure of syntactic complexity, often considered to reflect cognitive abilities such as memory. However, empirical support for this claim remains limited. This study aims to examine whether dependency distance (DD) measures are associated with global cognitive function and single-domain memory performance, and identifies which variant best reflects these abilities. A sequential picture description task elicited clinical speech data from Mandarin-speaking older adults with varying cognitive levels. Multiple regression analyses are used to examine relationships between several DD variants and cognitive performance, as measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment–Basic (MoCA-B) and a single-domain Memory Index Score. Results show that all DD variants associated with sentence length are significantly correlated with global cognitive level, whereas removing the influence of sentence length substantially reduces their discriminative power. Among them, mean dependency distance per sentence is the best indicator of cognitive status. In contrast, no DD measure shows a significant association with the memory index. These findings suggest that DD measures can capture speakers’ global cognitive status, with sentence length playing a key role. The study deepens our understanding of the relationship between language and cognition, providing empirical evidence for the Cognitive Commitment in usage-based linguistics.
Semantic priming and ERP correlates of predictive processing in Chinese aMCI patients Jingjing Yang, Jing Wang, Lihe Huang Applied Psycholinguistics, 2025 Purpose: One of the typical symptoms of patients with aMCI is impaired semantic memory, but it remains unclear whether this impairment affects all types of semantic relationships equally. The primary goal of this study is to assess whether there are differences in the performance of aMCI patients and healthy older adults in tasks involving antonymic and categorical semantic relationships. Method: A delayed congruency judgment task involving different types of semantic relationships (antonymic and categorical) was conducted on 13 normal aging adults and 13 aMCI patients. Participants were presented with word cues for antonyms or category exemplars, followed by targets that were either congruent or incongruent with the cues. Electrophysiological data were recorded simultaneously. Results: The application of the delayed congruency judgment task across various semantic relationships led to the following main findings: 1) Different semantic relationships exhibit distinct semantic priming characteristics. Antonym relationships are highly restricted lexical-semantic relations, allowing participants to make precise predictions, while categorical relationships are less restricted, leading participants to engage in graded activation and activate related features; 2) This study suggests that aMCI patients may only be able to activate specific semantic features when processing antonym relationships and are unable to make precise predictions. In contrast, their impairment in categorical relationships primarily manifests as a narrower range of activation during graded activation.
Older adults’ resistance to engaging in reminiscence therapy: A multimodal perspective Zhongquan Ma, Lihe Huang Discourse and Communication, 2025 This study employs multimodal conversation analysis to examine the precursors of resistance displays during Reminiscence Therapy (RT) sessions, the format of the resistance exhibited by Chinese older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and the ways it was managed by caregivers. It is found that older adults with MCI display resistance through behaviors like initiating repair, denying question premises, changing topics, refusing overtly, being silent, laughing, and giving minimal responses. Non-verbal cues such as gestures, head movements, averted gaze, and facial expressions are also employed to convey their resistance. In response, caregivers employ various facilitative practices to counter this resistance. Resistance occurs when the assumptions embedded in the caregiver’s question conflict with what the older adults have access to, or the question may infringe on the older adult’s epistemic rights. Our findings also highlight the dynamic and collaborative construction of power through negotiation of resistance and facilitation from epistemic perspective. These insights offer valuable guidance for enhancing the effectiveness of RT and fostering a more collaborative relationship between participants during RT sessions.
Word-Frequency Distributions in Chinese- and English- Speaking Older Adults: An Analysis across Languages and Cognitive Statuses Tongfu Yang, Lihe Huang, Tsy Yih Glottometrics, 2025 This study investigates how the word-frequency distributions in spoken language reflect cross-linguistic and cognitive differences in older adults. We analyzed Cookie Theft picture descriptions from 96 older adults: 48 Mandarin speakers (24 cognitively impaired and 24 cognitively normal) and 48 English speakers (24 cognitively impaired and 24 cognitively normal) and modeled their word frequency distributions using three functions: Zipf, Zipf-Mandelbrot, and Exponential model. All three models showed excellent goodness of fit at both group and individual levels, indicating that the basic Zipfian structure of lexical distributions is preserved in late life and is not disrupted by mild cognitive impairment. As for the fitting parameters, however, the decay parameter a in the Exponential and Zipf models consistently distinguished Mandarin from English, suggesting that language-specific lexical patterns are robustly encoded in the slope of the distribution but that adding a shift parameter can dampen how clearly a reflects them. By contrast, differences between cognitive groups were weak and inconsistent, implying that parameter a provides only a coarse and context-dependent reflection of cognitive status in short, constrained picture-description tasks.
Power Relations in Older Adults' Cognitive Interaction in Clinical Setting: A Multimodal Pragmatic Perspective Zhongquan Ma, Lihe Huang Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2024 This study explored the construction of power relations in the cognitive assessment of older adults within the Chinese clinical context. Data is derived from audio and video recordings that nine older adults produced in the cognitive assessment of the Chinese version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Basic (MoCA-B), which were then annotated and analyzed from a multimodal pragmatic perspective. The study reveals that examiners and older adults employed various speech acts to achieve distinct communicative goals, with power relations between them being reflected through these speech acts. Examiners tend to claim high power, utilizing discourse strategies such as request, interruption, evaluation, rhetorical questions, and directive speech acts. In contrast, older adults assert high power through directive speech acts, rhetorical questions, and interruptions. Both parties also exhibit low power by using confirming questions and explanations. Additionally, gestures, smiles, prosody features, and other non-verbal communicative resources are synergistically employed to exercise power. The interactive mechanism of constructing power relations reveals that age affects older adults’ power relations construction even in a professional setting of the Chinese context. The negotiation between the advanced age of older adults and the expertise of examiners jointly shapes power relations in their interactions.