Zory Zhang is a 1st year graduate student in the Computational Cognitive Development Lab at Brown University. He received his BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in understanding cognitive development by comparing children and adults.
UIUC Japan House, 2025 Mar by Olivia
My resumé:
ZoryZhang_Oct_2025.pdf
🔍 Research Interest
Student of children's cognition. I am intrigued by how children eventually learn so much about the world so quickly without even realizing they are learning (e.g., concepts that "carve nature at its joints", the specific ways agents are driven by their beliefs and desires, or their native languages). I'm particularly interested in the puzzle of why children are sometimes more flexible learners than adults, readily revising their beliefs, yet at other times seem to arbitrarily firmly believe.
📄 Manuscripts and Publications
- 𝐙𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐙𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠†, Pinyuan Feng†, Bingyang Wang, Tianwei Zhao, Suyang Yu, Qingying Gao, Hokin Deng*, Ziqiao Ma*, Yijiang Li*, & Dezhi Luo*. (2025). Can Vision Language Models Infer Human Gaze Direction? A Controlled Study. Arxiv. Project Page. Code. Stimuli. PDF.
- Dylan Zhang, Curt Tigges, 𝐙𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐙𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠, Stella Biderman, Maxim Raginsky, and Talia Ringer (2024). Transformer-Based Models Are Not Yet Perfect At Learning to Emulate Structural Recursion. Transactions on Machine Learning Research. URL.
📣 News
- June 2025: My first manuscript is out! [𝐙𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐙𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠†, Pinyuan Feng†, Bingyang Wang, Tianwei Zhao, Suyang Yu, Qingying Gao, Hokin Deng*, Ziqiao Ma*, Yijiang Li*, & Dezhi Luo*. (2025). Can Vision Language Models Infer Human Gaze Direction? A Controlled Study. Arxiv. Project Page. Code. Stimuli. PDF.](https://zoryzhang.notion.site/Pinyuan-Feng-Bingyang-Wang-Tianwei-Zhao-Suyang-Yu-Qingying-Gao-Hokin-Deng-Ziqiao-Ma-Yijian-20c9e9579bec80a68a59cc5902f3b7c2) We characterized the gaze inference in Vision Language Models through a controlled study.
🧘🏼 Posts
Writing is the process through which ideas are produced and refined.
In this space, I will post blogs that contain mostly my original articulation, therefore prioritized over other pages on my website, which are mainly notes.
Untitled
📬 Highlighted Pages
- Blogs
- Statistics for Psych/AI
- Psychlogy/AI PhD Application Advice Compilation
- English for Non-native Speakers
- Attention & Transformer
- Berkeley CS162 along with most Brown-notes UIUC-notes HKUST-notes