Profile

I am a funded PhD student in Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience at Lancaster University, supervised by Dr Francesca Citron, Dr Bo Yao, and Professor Kate Cain. My research focuses on visual semantics and multimodal metaphor processing, with a particular interest in how affective variables such as arousal and valence shape semantic inference.

My PhD project examines how people understand verbal and visual metaphors under different task demands. I treat metaphor comprehension as a process in which readers and viewers identify relevant cues, build source–target mappings, and integrate intended meanings with context. This allows me to investigate when emotional arousal supports engagement with meaning and when it increases processing cost.

Methodologically, I combine controlled stimulus development, behavioural experiments, EEG/ERP methods, and computational analysis. My current work focuses on reaction time, accuracy, and ERP components, particularly the N400 and the Late Positive Potential (LPP). I am also interested in reproducible research practices, including transparent materials, norming pipelines, and reproducible analysis workflows using R.

Broader research interests: visual semantics, multimodal metaphor, emotional arousal, semantic inference, EEG/ERP, decision-making, computational modelling, and advertising communication.

Lab affiliations:

• Emotion and Cognition (EmoCom) Lab, led by Dr Francesca Citron

• Language, Inner Speech, and Neuroscience (LISN) Lab, led by Dr Bo Yao