Tzu Yin Lai
Associate Professor, Psychology
Associate Professor, Cognitive Science
Associate Professor, Cognitive Science - GIDP
Associate Professor, Second Language Acquisition / Teaching - GIDP
Member of the Graduate Faculty
Vicky T. Lai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Program of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Arizona. She received her doctoral training in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she used measures of brain electrical activity (ERPs) to study how people understand metaphorical language. During her postdoctoral training in the Neurobiology of Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, she expanded the scope of her research to include emotion, exploring the role of emotion in language, using ERPs and functional MRI. She then continued her postdoctoral training in the Language, Concepts, and the Brain Laboratory at the University of South Carolina, where she examined the embodiment of language through metaphor.
Research Interest
Dr. Lai is interested in the cognitive processes and the neural bases of meaning and language in context. Her work so far can be categorized in three areas: (1) Figurative language: How do people process metaphorical language? What is the role of metaphor in the embodied views of language? What are the social-affective functions of metaphors? (2) Emotion and language: How is emotion encoded in language? How do language activities such as reading give rise to emotion? How do readers’ mood states influence meaning making in language? (3) Language and thought in bilinguals: Do differences in languages influence how speakers of those languages perceive and reason about the world?
Offering Research Opportunities
Yes
Prerequisite Courses
Dr. Lai will be on sabbatical in AY2024-2025. Please check back in summer 2025.
Majors Considered
Psychology, Neuroscience, School of Information, Computer Science, Linguistics
Description of Opportunity
No description given
