Laura Baiocco Pereira

Graduate Student, Cognition & Neural Systems
Faculty Advisor: Vicky Lai
Baiocco Headshot
laurabaiocco@arizona.edu
Pronouns:
She, Her, Hers

I am a PhD student in the Cognitive and Neural Systems program in the Psychology Department minoring in Cognitive Science. Before coming to the UA, I did my Bachelor's and a Master's in Linguistics in Brazil, in which I mainly investigated figurative language comprehension. Currently, I use electrophisiological measures to look into the relationship between metaphor and emotion at the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language lab.

Research Interests: 

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

Selected Presentations/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)

TA for:

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

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

Awards and Recognitions:

  • Galileo Circle Scholar (2025)
  • Outstanding Research in Cognitive Science Award (2024)

Updated: 07/14/25

 

Degrees

  • M.A. Psychology, University of Arizona (2023) - Cognition and Neural Systems program
  • M.A. Linguistics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul