Laura Baiocco Pereira

I am a PhD student in the Cognitive and Neural Systems program, minoring in Cognitive Science. Before coming to the UA, I got a Bachelor's and a Master's degrees in Linguistics in Brazil. Currently, at the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Language Lab, I use electrophysiological and behavioral measures to examine the relationship between metaphor and emotion, as well as to investigate figurative ability in the lifespan and in clinical contexts.

Research Interests: 

• Figurative language processing, emotional processing, and the relationship between the two.

Selected Publications:

• Baiocco, L., Kielar, A., & Lai, V.T. (2026). Metaphor comprehension in neurotypical adults: A scoping review of event-related potential studies. Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1-31. https://doi.org/10.3758/S13415-025-01376-Z
• Baiocco, L., Pfeifer, V.A., & Lai, V.T. (2025). Metaphor processing is influenced by stimulus emotionally and task demands: Evidence from ERPs. Brain and Language, 261, 105530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105530 

Selected Presentations:

• Baiocco L., Nickels K., Lai V.G., & Kielar A. (2026) Preserved metaphor comprehension despite severe literal language impairment in semantic variant PPA: Evidence for graded degradation of semantic knowledge. Poster to be presented at the Arizona Alzheimer's Consortium Conference, Tucson, AZ, September 17.
• Baiocco, L., & Lai, V.T. (2026). Emotional processing in metaphor comprehension: a cross-modal masked priming ERP study. Talk given at the 9th Researching and Applying Metaphor (RAM) specialized seminar, Pavia, Italy, June 16-17.
• Baiocco, L., Krebs, L., Kielar, A., & Lai, V.T. (2026). The time course of action metaphor comprehension in healthy aging: An ERP study. Poster presented at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University Cognitive Science Conclave, Tucson, AZ, April 25.
• Healthy Older Adults Show Delayed Metaphor Processing Compared to Young Adults: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials, University of Arizona Psychology Cognition & Neural Systems (CNS) Seminar. (2026)

Master's Project:

• Baiocco, L., Pfeifer, V. A., & Lai, V. T. (2023). Emotionality and task goals influence metaphor processing: evidence from ERPs. Poster presented at the 36th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (HSP), Pittsburgh, PA, March 9-11.

Courses Taught:

• PSY 101 - Introduction to Psychology (2024)
• PSY 290A - Research Methods (2025)
• CGSC 320 - Issues & Themes in Cognitive Science (2026)

TA for:

• PSY 230 - Psychological Measurements & Statistics (2026)
• PSY 405 - Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (2025)

*Year listed indicates when this individual last worked in the specified course.

Awards and Recognitions:

• Graduate Summer Fellowship Awardee (2026)
• Galileo Circle Scholar (2025)
• Outstanding Research in Cognitive Science Award (2024)

Updated: 09/22/26