Alicia M Chen

About

I'm a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, advised by Rebecca Saxe. My research focuses on how people act, communicate, and understand others' behavior in the context of social structures like relationships and groups. Previously, I graduated from Harvard College in 2022 with an AB in Chemistry & Physics.

Preprints and working papers

1. Alicia M Chen, Rebecca Saxe, and Robert D Hawkins. Disentangling passive and active origins of linguistic diversity using experimental microsocieties. (submitted)
2. Alicia M Chen, Robert D Hawkins, and Rebecca Saxe. Signaling social identity in referential communication. (under revision)
3. Alicia M Chen and Rebecca Saxe. Generous acts have contrasting meanings in equal versus hierarchical social relationships. (in prep)

Journal articles

1. Alicia M Chen and Rebecca Saxe. Expectations of reciprocal generosity are specific to equal relationships. Open Mind, 2026.
2. Alicia M Chen, Kartik Chandra, and Rebecca Saxe. Computational models of social cognition should incorporate social relationships as core primitives. Commentary on Thomas, A. J. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2026.
3. Alicia M Chen*, Matthias Hofer*, Moshe Poliak, Roger Levy, and Noga Zaslavsky. Discrete and systematic communication in a continuous signal-meaning space. Journal of Language Evolution, 2025. [Hurford prize for best student oral presentation, Evolang XV]
4. Alicia M Chen, Andrew Palacci, Natalia Vélez, Robert D Hawkins*, and Samuel J Gershman*. A hierarchical Bayesian model of adaptive teaching. Cognitive Science, 2024.
5. Natalia Vélez, Alicia M Chen, Taylor Burke, Fiery A Cushman*, and Samuel J Gershman*. Teachers recruit mentalizing regions to represent learners' beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023.
6. Luis Hernandez-Nunez, Alicia Chen, Gonzalo Budelli, Matthew E Berck, Vincent Richter, Anna Rist, Andreas S Thum, Albert Cardona, Mason Klein, Paul Garrity, and Aravinthan DT Samuel. Synchronous and opponent thermosensors use flexible cross-inhibition to orchestrate thermal homeostasis. Science Advances, 2021.

Conference papers

1. Alicia M Chen, Ashley J Thomas, Joshua B Tenenbaum, and Rebecca Saxe. A social inverse-planning model captures how relationship intimacy constrains action planning and interpretation. Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2026.
2. Alicia M Chen and Rebecca Saxe. How turn taking communicates desired equality in social relationships. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2024.
3. Alicia M Chen and Rebecca Saxe. People have systematic expectations linking social relationships to patterns of reciprocal altruism. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2023.