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Gabriella Vigliocco

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Gabriella Vigliocco
Occupation(s)Professor of Psychology and Language Sciences
Academic background
Alma materUniversità degli Studi di Padova (BS)
Universita degli Studi di Trieste (PhD)
Academic work
DisciplineExperimental Psychology
InstitutionsUniversity College of London
Main interestsCognitive and Computational Psychology, Linguistics, Language Development, Neuroscience, Iconicity, Sentence Production

Gabriella Vigliocco is an Italian experimental psychologist who conducts research in the field of psycholinguistics, focusing on psychological factors and neural mechanisms underlying people's ability to produce and understand language[1]. Vigliocco's interdisciplinary work draws from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and computational modeling.[2] She holds a professorship at the University College of London (UCL) in the Division of Psychology & Language Sciences,[3] where she is also the director of the Language and Cognition Lab[2] and the director of the Leverhulme Doctoral Training Programme. Vigliocco is a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society[4][5] and the Association for Psychological Sciences.[6]

Biography

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Vigliocco was born and raised in a small rural village in north Italy near the Alps.[6] In a pursuit to move away from her small hometown to pursue her interest in psychology, she received her B.S. degree in Experimental Psychology at Università degli Studi di Padova in 1990. She attended graduate school at Universita degli Studi di Trieste where she obtained her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology in 1995 under the advisement of Carlo Semenza. During the last year of her Ph.D. program, in 1994, Vigliocco was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study grammatical encoding in sentence production.[7] She then went on to complete her postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona with Dr. Merrill Garret.[6]

Vigliocco is a professor of Psychology at the University College of London (UCL). At UCL, she leads the Language and Cognition Lab.[2] Prior to becoming faculty at UCL, Vigliocco served as Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin.[6] Vigliocco has taken on several key roles during her time at UCL. From 2006 to 2016, she served as co-director of the Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre.[8] She was also the Head of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences Research Department from 2008 to 2010 and the Acting Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences from 2010 to 1011.[9] Subsequently, Vigliocco served as the Vice Dean of Education from 2014 to 2018.[9] Most recently, in 2018, Vigliocco took on the role of Director of the Leverhulme Doctoral Training programme for the Ecological Study of the Brain.[6]

Outside of her academic work, she enjoys spending time with her son and family, cooking, reading, and going to classical music concerts.[6]

Research

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Vigliocco brings in her interdisciplinary knowledge across cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and computational modeling to bring a new perspective on how humans learn and use language. A core theme she has argued is that language is learned within ecological, face-to-face contexts that include multimodal environments and sensorimotor experiences.[10] Examples of multimodal signals include gestures, eye contact, emotional expression, and intonation. It is through these gestures that individuals can communicate turn-taking and abstract meaning.[6] Through her research, Vigliocco highlights the importance of using gesture in language development, noting how some context is lost when communicating in non-face-to-face modalities.

Some of her key contributions include understanding how abstract words and concepts are grounded in neural processes[11] and investigating how iconicity enhances language processing and development.[12] In one of her most cited papers, Vigliocco and colleagues found that both individuals who sign and use spoken language leverage iconicity in language processing to help bridge the gap between linguistic forms and conceptual representations.[12] Iconic symbolism can include signs that look like objects, such as holding up your hands to signify you are taking a photo with a "camera".[13] Vigliocco's research found that caregivers were inclined to include iconic symbols in their language and communication with children when the objects they were referring to were not present, suggesting that gesture is used to aid language development.[14][12]

At the Language and Cognition Lab at UCL, Vigliocco is leading several projects in which her and her students are currently exploring the relationship between language and thought as well as the representation of abstract knowledge.[15]

Vigliocco was awarded the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award of £75k[6][16] and nominated for UCL's 2024 Inclusion Awards for EDI Excellence.[17] She has held grants from James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF)[18] and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)[19] to study a wide range of topics, including semantic fields, early language acquisition, iconicity, and social influences on learning. She has received grants from the Nordic Foundation, Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships, and the European Research Council (ERC) to study financial literacy and ecological language. Vigliocco is also an active member and resident scientist for the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute.[20] She's been invited to give talks at many events and organizations, including the Women in Cognitive Science organization[9][21] as well as a couple podcast episodes hosted by Dr. Marie McNeely in the People Behind the Science Podcast.[6][22]

Representative publications

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  • Kousta, S.-T., Vigliocco, G., Vinson, D. P., Andrews, M., & Del Campo, E. (2011). The representation of abstract words: Why emotion matters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(1), 14–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021446
  • Meteyard, L., Cuadrado, S. R., Bahrami, B., & Vigliocco, G. (2012). Coming of age: A review of embodiment and the neuroscience of semantics. Cortex, 48(7), 788-804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2010.11.002
  • Perniss, P., Thompson, R. L., & Vigliocco, G. (2010). Iconicity as a general property of language: evidence from spoken and signed languages. Frontiers in psychology, 1, 227. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00227
  • Vigliocco, G., Vinson, D. P., Druks, J., Barber, H., & Cappa, S. F. (2011). Nouns and verbs in the brain: A review of behavioural, electrophysiological, neuropsychological and imaging studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(3), 407-426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.04.007

References

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  1. ^ "University College London". profiles.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  2. ^ a b c UCL (2023-05-17). "Language and Cognition Lab". UCL Psychology and Language Sciences. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  3. ^ UCL (2018-01-29). "gabriella-vigliocco". UCL Psychology and Language Sciences. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  4. ^ "Fellows". Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  5. ^ "MRRI Scientist in Residence Named a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society – Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI)". mrri.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i PBtS (2021-08-16). "618: Dr. Gabriella Vigliocco: Investigating How the Brain Allows Us to Learn and Use Language". People Behind the Science Podcast. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  7. ^ "Gabriella Vigliocco | Fulbright Scholar Program". fulbrightscholars.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  8. ^ "GtR". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  9. ^ a b c "Gabriella Vigliocco CV" (PDF). Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  10. ^ UCL (2023-10-18). "About ECOLANG". UCL Psychology and Language Sciences. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  11. ^ Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vigliocco, Gabriella; Vinson, David P.; Andrews, Mark; Del Campo, Elena (2011). "The representation of abstract words: Why emotion matters". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 140 (1): 14–34. doi:10.1037/a0021446. ISSN 1939-2222. PMID 21171803.
  12. ^ a b c Perniss, Pamela; Thompson, Robin; Vigliocco, Gabriella (2010-12-31). "Iconicity as a General Property of Language: Evidence from Spoken and Signed Languages". Frontiers in Psychology. 1: 227. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00227. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 3153832. PMID 21833282.
  13. ^ "Cathy Heffernan: Report from DCAL's Deaf Children's Development Conference". The Limping Chicken. 2012-10-03. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  14. ^ UCL (2023-06-26). "Iconicity as a Bridge between Language and the World". UCL Psychology and Language Sciences. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  15. ^ "University College London". profiles.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  16. ^ "Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  17. ^ UCL (2024-06-29). "PALS Staff and Students Nominated in UCL's 2024 Inclusion Awards". UCL Psychology and Language Sciences. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  18. ^ "JSMF - Grant Archive - 2001 - Gabriella Vigliocco - Semantic fields and grammatical class effects in language use". grants.jsmf.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  19. ^ "GtR". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  20. ^ "Who We Are – Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI)". mrri.org. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  21. ^ "WiCS Europe". Women in Cognitive Science. Retrieved 2024-10-29.
  22. ^ "Investigating How the Brain Allows Us to Learn and Use Language - Dr. Gabriella Vigliocco". Apple Podcasts (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2024-10-29.
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