Research

This line of work explores the relationship between metaphor and emotional processing, which is the topic of my doctoral dissertation. Some of the questions I investigated are as follows:

1. How are emotional metaphors processed? Do contextual settings such as type of task matter?

2. Is emotion a fundamental part of metaphoric processing? Could emotional processing facilitate metaphoric comprehension? 

3.  Do language speakers perceive metaphorical sentences as more emotional than literal sentences? What is the role of novelty in this perception, and does context influences this relationship?

Selected publications and presentations on this theme:

Baiocco, L., Pfeifer, V. A., & Lai, V. T. (2025). Metaphor processing is influenced by stimulus emotionality and task demands: Evidence from ERPs. Brain and Language, 261, 105530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105530 

Baiocco, L., & Lai, V. T. (2026). Emotional processing in metaphor comprehension: a cross-modal masked priming study. Talk given at the 9th Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) specialized seminar, Pavia, Italy, June 16-17.

Baiocco, L., & Lai, V. T. (2025). Unpacking the emotional dimensions of metaphors: the contributions of arousal, valence, and novelty. Talk given at the 17th Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) conference, Southfield, MI, August 7-10.

Drawing on the 30-year mark since the first ERP study on metaphors (Pynte et al., 1996), my collaborators and I wrote a scoping review summarizing 62 experiments published on the topic. Besides a discussion on the state of the art research and on the meaning of the N400 and later effects on the topic of metaphors, we provide a summarizing table that can be useful for researchers in the field. It provides details on stimuli, tasks, experiment settings, and major results regarding N400 and later effects (LP and LN) in the 62 experiments included. 

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 

Link for extended table summarizing findings for all included papers: https://osf.io/5zcm6 

I am also interested in how different groups of people comprehend/process metaphors and in what these individual differences reveal about the nature of figurative language processing. Some of the questions I investigated are the following:

1. What are the signatures (neurally and behaviorally) of metaphor comprehension in Primary Progressive Aphasia?

2. Do allistic and autistic people comprehend and produce metaphors differently? 

3. Do older adults show different neural signatures during metaphor comprehension compared to young adults?

4. Do people who were born deaf show a delay in meeting figurative language comprehension milestones?

Selected publications and presentations on this theme:

Marques, D., Baiocco, L., & Siqueira, M. (2025). How do oral deaf individuals comprehend primary metaphors and idioms? Let’s begin to dot the I’s and cross the T’s. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, 33(3), 114-131. https://doi.org/10.17851/2237-2083.33.3.114-131 

Baiocco L., Nickels K., Lai V. T., & 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., 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.

Baiocco, L., Lai, V. T., & Kielar, A. (2025). Comprehension of action metaphors by individuals with Primary Progressive Aphasia: An ERP study in progress. Poster presented at the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL) 17th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, September 12-14.

Baiocco, L., & Lai, V. T. (2024). Metaphor comprehension and production in individuals with autistic traits. Poster presented at the 8th Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) specialized seminar, Macerata, Italy, June 6-7.

This line of research investigates whether metaphors can be a useful tool in teaching science-related concepts (e.g., lysosome, mitochondria), and what are the neural correlates underlying metaphoric learning. We are specifically looking at learning by high schoolers and young adults in first and second language.

Selected publications and presentations on this theme:

Krebs, L., Bressler, M., Bischetti, L., Baiocco, L., Cora, C., Bambini, V., & Lai, V. (submitted). Thinking through metaphor in a second language: A study of whether metaphors benefit the science learning of L2 students compared to literal explanations. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6b4ej_v1 

Krebs, L., Fields, E., Baiocco, L., & Lai, V. T. (2026). Brain oscillations during naturalistic tutoring of science concepts using metaphors. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, March 7-10.

Krebs, L., Baiocco, L., & Lai, V. T. (2025). Crossing conceptual terrain: ERP correlates of learning biology concepts through conversational tutoring dyads using metaphorical and literal explanations. Poster presented at the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL) 17th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, September 12-14.

This work aims at developing a psychometric tool capable of assessing figurative language comprehension at different ages. As an umbrella project, it included testing children, teenagers, and adults in order to establish parameters of figurative language ability across the lifespan. This instrument is validated in Brazilian Portuguese, soon to be validated in English, and includes metaphor, metonymy, idioms, and proverbs. 

Selected publications and presentations on this theme:

Siqueira, M., Melo, T., Duarte Júnior, S., Baiocco, L., Ferrari, C. G., & Lopes, N. (2023). Many hands on this study: Development of a metonymy comprehension task.  DELTA, 39(3). https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-460X202339350607  

Siqueira, M., Ferrari, C. G., Rodrigues, J. C., Baiocco, L., de Oliveira, T. M., Duarte Jr, S., & Marques, D. (2023). Evidências de validade de tarefas de compreensão de metáforas primárias: uma revisão da literatura [Validity evidence in primary metaphor comprehension tasks: a literature review]. Letrônica, 16(1), e44362-e44362.

Siqueira, M., Baiocco, L., Ferrari, C., Lopes, N., Duarte Jr., S. (2017). Compreensão de expressões idiomáticas em período de aquisição da linguagem [Idiom comprehension during language acquisition]. Letras de Hoje, 52, 391-400.