About

Ming Jiang is an Assistant Professor in Biostatistics & Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics (BMI) and the iSchool. He obtained his Ph.D. in Informatics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where he worked with J. Stephen Downie, and interned at the Deep Learning Group in Microsoft Research. His research interests broadly encompass Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence, with a focus on developing human-centered and trustworthy language technologies. He designs algorithms and benchmarks to study how humans and AI systems perceive and communicate information through visual and textual content, aiming to uncover sociotechnical principles that enable language technologies to communicate reliably and support effective interpersonal and cross-community interactions. Recently, his work has centered on understanding the 'mental modeling' of large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), fostering their responsibility to social context, and enhancing their adaptability to human-centered diversity across various communication scenarios. Jiang is actively seeking highly motivated PhD students in Computer Science, Biomedical Data Science, and Information programs, as well as master’s or undergraduate students interested in NLP research.

Research topics

• Developmental psychology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Psychiatry
• History
• Marketing
• Clinical psychology
• Psychoanalysis

Selected publications

• Attempting to break the fourth wall: Young children's action errors with screen media

  Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies · 2021 · 22 citations

  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Social psychology

  Young children sometimes perform actions not afforded by the environmental context that they are currently in. Anecdotal reports and past research have suggested that young children sometimes attempt to perform actions with screen media that they cannot perform successfully given the constraints of the media. These behaviors have been defined as a type of action error we refer to as media errors. We report on two studies that examined the nature and frequency of these behaviors in young children. Study 1 was an online retrospective survey of 292 caregivers' reports of their young children's (ages 8 months to 4 years) media errors. Study 2 was a 6-month prospective study of 45 families with children initially between the ages of 10 and 24 months. Across the two studies, a substantial portion of caregivers reported that their children had performed one or more media errors that were confirmed by experienced coders (30% in Study 1, 62% in Study 2). In both studies, the only tested factor that was reliably related to the frequency of media errors was the child's age. Media errors were found to peak in late infancy and decrease significantly with age thereafter, suggesting that as children age and gain more experience with screen media they come to understand what this type of media affords for action.

  DOI

• Do You Remember Being Told What Happened to Grandma? The Role of Early Socialization on Later Coping with Death.

  Grantee Submission · 2020

  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Developmental psychology

• Evaluating and communicating about the healthiness of foods: Predictors of parents’ judgments and parent-child conversations

  Cognitive Development · 2020 · 13 citations

  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Social psychology
  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Karl S. Rosengren

  University of Rochester

  11 shared

• David Menéndez

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  6 shared

• Iseli G. Hernandez

  Sustainable Innovation (Sweden)

  5 shared

• Koeun Choi

  Virginia Tech

  4 shared

• Martha W. Alibali

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  3 shared

• Heather L. Kirkorian

  3 shared

• Brittany G. Travers

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2 shared

• Lucia Martinčeková

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Biostatistics

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  2005

• M.S., Biostatistics

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  2002

• B.S., Mathematics and Applied Mathematics

  University of Science and Technology of China

  1999

Similar researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison

• John Ralphh-178
• Brad Astorh-119
• Weibo Caih-113
• Matt Turnerh-113
• Paul Ahlquisth-110