Shihui Yu

Profile

I completed the MSc Psychological Approaches to Health, and my Ph.D. under the title “Recognising and responding to infant appetite cues – implications for developing a ‘baby translator’” at the University of Leeds. My Ph.D. project focused on human appetite in adults and children, infant feeding, responsive feeding, satiety/satiation responsiveness, parental sensitivity, and alexithymia. Both my master and my Ph.D. are supervised by Professor Marion Hetherington.

As a PGR rep and a member of the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Committee in the School of Psychology, my interests lie not only in doing research but also in bringing PGRs together within our school, to create a sense of community where we call home.

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Research interests

My master's project focused on the satiation process in which we explored the association between eating cessation (measured by the Reasons Individuals Stop Eating Questionnaire, AKA “RISE-Q”) and other eating traits including Satiety Responsiveness (AEBQ), mindful eating traits, and interoception.

My Ph.D. project aimed to explore to what extent that caregiver’s ability to “tune in” to their own internal appetite and affect cues (i.e., alexithymia, difficulties in identifying and describing emotions and feelings) would influence their responsive feeding practices. During my Ph.D., we validated the shorter version of RISE-Q, which is named RISE-Q15 (Chawner et al., 2022). In addition, we found that caregiver’s ability to “tune in” to their own internal satiation cues inversely mediated the relationship between caregivers’s alexithymia and their awareness of infant hunger and satiety cues during feeding (Yu et al., 2026). That is, better caregiver’s "tune-in" to internal satiation cues reduces the negative impact of alexithymia on their recognition of infant hunger and fullness cues during feeding. The last study in my Ph.D. project involved a follow-up qualitative study on mealtime experiences with parents with high levels of alexithymia (measured by the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale). We had one-to-one semi-structured, video elicitation embedded interviews with 14 parents (2 fathers, 12 mothers) of children aged 18-36m. The conversation involved their mealtime interactions, challenges in feeding their children such as child sensory needs, their coping strategies, as well as how they have adapted their feeding practices as their children developed. Our study showed that caregivers with high levels of alexithymia may benefit from tailored support rather than generic guidelines, which promotes caregiver’s sensitivity to both their own and their child’s cues, and fosters positive mealtime experiences (Yu et al., 2026).

Research interests:

• Human appetite
• Satiation/satiety
• Infant feeding
• Responsive feeding
• Parental sensitivity
• Mindful eating
• Interoceptive awareness
• Intuitive eating
• Childhood obesity
• Alexithymia

Qualifications

• Ph.D. Psychology
• M.Sc. Psychological Approaches to Health (Merit)
• B.Sc. Applied Psychology (Hons)
• B.A. Journalism (Hons, secondary degree)