Vicky Tzuyin Lai

Vicky Tzuyin Lai

Assistant Professor, Psychology
Assistant Professor, Cognitive Science
Assistant Professor, Cognitive Science - GIDP
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Assistant Professor, Second Language Acquisition / Teaching - GIDP
Primary Department
Department Affiliations
Contact
(520) 621-7447

Work Summary

Dr. Lai uses behavioral and neuroscience methods to study contextualized language meaning. Her current research include figurative language, emotion and language, and language and thought about motion and time. Dr. Lai received her PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics first and then at the University of South Carolina. She has been a faculty in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona since Fall 2016. She is an elected fellow at the Psychonomic Society.

Research Interest

Dr. Lai uses behavioral and neuroscience methods to study contextualized language meaning. Her current research can be put in three categories: (1) Figurative language: How do people comprehend metaphors, idioms, and irony? What are the cognitive and social-affective functions of these different types of figurative language? (2) Emotion and 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 people who speak two languages that have conflicting semantic constructs perceive and reason about the world differently? Dr. Lai received her PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder. She conducted postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics first and then at the University of South Carolina. She has been a faculty in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona since Fall 2016. She is an elected fellow at the Psychonomic Society.