Faculty

Dr. Kyongje Sung is an expert in Quantitative and Mathematical Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience who joined ECAE in August 2020 after a decade of professional experience in several academic institutions across USA.

Dr. Sung received his graduate training at Purdue University, after which he joined the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in North Carolina as a postdoctoral associate. In 2008, he joined the Division of Cognitive Neurology/Neuropsychology in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow. Later in 2010, he was promoted to a faculty position as a research associate.

Dr. Sung’s research topics include diverse levels of human information processing, from low-level visual perception to the higher cognitive functions, of healthy individuals and people with a mental condition, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism. He adapted computational (simulation), electrophysiologic (EEG), and behavioral analysis (reaction times) techniques to answer the research questions.

His recent research focuses on the electrophysiologic investigation of early visual perception of individuals with autism, especially those with low-functioning autism. The main goal of Dr. Sung’s recent research effort is to identify the defining electrophysiologic characteristics in people with autism and to test non-invasive intervention methods, such as transcranial direct/alternating current stimulation (tDCS/tACS), as a potential intervention tool.

Dr. Sung received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2005 in Quantitative and Mathematical Psychology applied to human visual perception and attention. Before his time at Purdue, Dr. Sung received M.S in Cognitive Science from SungKyunKwan University, South Korea, and B.B.A in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the same university.

Articles in Peer-Reviewed Research Journals

• Sung, K. & Gordon, B. (2018). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) facilitates overall visual search response times but does not interact with visual search task factors. PLOS One, 13(3): e0194640.
• Sung, K., Gordon, B., & Schretlen, D. J. (2016). Semantic structure can be inferred from category fluency tasks via clustering analyses: reply to Voorspoels et al. (2014). Cortex, 75, 249-254.
• Sung, K., Gordon, B., & Schretlen, D. J. (2013).  Evidence of semantic clustering in letter-cued word retrieval. Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology, 35(10), 1015-1023.
• Sung, K., Gordon, B., Vannorsdall, T. D., Ledoux, K., & Schretlen, D. J. (2013).  Impaired retrieval of semantic information in bipolar disorder: a clustering analysis of category fluency productions.  Journal of abnormal psychology, 122(3), 624-634. Doi:10.1037/a0033068.
• Sung, K., Gordon, B., Vannorsdall, T. D., Ledoux, K., Pickett, E. J., Pearlson, G. D., & Schretlen, D. J. (2012).  Semantic clustering of category fluency in schizophrenia examined via singular value decomposition analysis. Journal of international neuropsychological society, 18(3), 565-575. Doi:10.1017/s1355617712000136.
• Wojtach, W. T., Sung, K., & Purves, D. (2009). An empirical explanation of the speed-distance effect. PLOS One 4(48): e6771. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006771.
• Sung, K., Wojtach, W. T., & Purves, D. (2009). An empirical explanation of the aperture effect. Proceedings of National Academy of Science USA, 106, 298-303.
• Wojtach, W. T., Sung, K., Truong, S., & Purves, D. (2008). An empirical explanation of the flash-lag effect. Proceedings of national academy of science usa, 105, 16338-16343.
• Sung, K. (2008). Serial and parallel attentive visual searches: evidence from cumulative distribution functions of response times. Journal of experimental psychology: human perception and performance, 34, 1372-1388.
• Schweickert, R., Fortin, C., & Sung, K. (2007). Concurrent visual search and time reproduction with crosstalk. Journal of mathematical psychology, 51, 99-121.
• Dzhafarov, E., Schweickert, R., & Sung, k. (2004). Mental architectures with selectively influenced but stochastically interdependent components. Journal of mathematical psychology, 48, 51-64.
• Park, C., Kwak, H., Kim, Y., Lee, J., Lee, K., Sung, K., & Lee, J. (1997). A study of information search in the internet and cognitive learning process.  Proceedings of the Meeting for Korean Society for Cognitive Science. Seoul, Korea.
• Park, C., Kim, Y., Kwak, H., Lee, J., Sung, K., & Lee, J. (1997). Exploratory learning and user strategy in information search on the internet. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting for Korean Psychological Association. Seoul, Korea.

• Schweickert, F., Fisher, D. L., & Sung, K. (2012). Discovering cognitive structure by selectively influencing mental processes: a guide.  Singapore: World Scientific.