General research objectives of the Centre include:

• Conducting basic behavioral, cognitive, and neuropsychological research on infants, children, and adolescents, as well as adults
• Applying developmental research to educational problems and family systems
• Assessing a wide range of cognitive, social, and behavioral skills in infancy, childhood, and adolescence
• Forming partnerships with institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China, and overseas to promote cross-cultural and cross-institutional developmental research.

Research activities currently underway in the Centre include:

• Encouraging and evaluating the effects of shared parent-child reading to stimulate emergent literacy in Hong Kong kindergartners, including those with hearing or language impairments
• Identifying markers of reading and reading disability in primary school children in Hong Kong and Beijing
• Tracking how early language skills in infants from Hong Kong and Beijing predict subsequent language and reading

The Joys of Parent-child reading: Parent-child reading is an ideal context for children's language development because it offers both social and contextual support for language development. For more information, go to www.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/~qefproject/ Longitudinal study on Chinese children's language and literacy acquisition: This longitudinal study investigates the predictors of reading ability as well as disabilities. It has been carried out in Hong Kong and Beijing continuously for ten years. Part of the results are now available in the following website: www.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/~hkbjlong/indexeng.htm