Interests

Psycholinguistics, multimodal language, numerical cognition, spatial cognition, decision making

Publications

Research Papers

Volpi, V., Zona, C. I., & Fischer, M. H. (2026) Motion-numerical compatibility affects magnitude classification. Scientific Reports, 16(4760), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-37414-0

Zona, C. I., & Fischer, M. H. (2026) The left digit bias in two-dimensional manual pointing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Language, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001576)

Zona, C. I., & Fischer, M. H. (2025) Behavioural correlates of hexagonal grid-cell activations in manual pointing. Stage 1 Registered report, accepted in-principle by Peer Community In Registered Reports on 10/12/2025. osf.io/bmjhe/files

Zona, C. I., & Reifegerste, J. (2024). Visual context benefits spoken sentence comprehension across the lifespan. Journal of Memory and Language, 140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2024.104576

Zona, C. I., & Felser, C. (2023). Integrating morphosyntactic and visual cues in L1 and L2 comprehension. Languages, 8(2), 111. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8020111

Zona, C. I., Raab, M., & Fischer, M. H. (2019). Embodied Perspectives on Behavioral Cognitive Enhancement. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 3(2), 144–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-018-0102-3

Conferences

Zona, C. I., Cognitive sources of the left digit bias. Poster, MindBrainBody Symposium (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science), Berlin, Germany, March 09-11, 2026. 

Zona, C. I., Morphosyntactic sensitivity predicts reliance on visual scenes for thematic-role comprehension. Embodied and Situated Language Processing Conference (University of Aix-Marseille), Aix-en-Provence, France, September 24, 2025.

Volpi, V., Zona, C. I., & Fischer, M. H. Motion-numerical compatibility effects on magnitude processing. Poster, “MindBrainBody” (MBB) Symposium, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, Berlin, 10-12 March 2025.

Zona, C. I. & Fischer, M. H., Categorization bias in 2D manual pointing. MindBrainBody Symposium (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science), Berlin, Germany, March 11, 2025.

Zona, C. I., Disentangling visual and task effects in visually situated thematic-role comprehension. Poster, "Embodied and Situated Language Processing" (ESLP24), Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 03-05 October 2024.

Zona, C. I., and Fischer, M. H. Spatial mappings of number processing in pointing. Talk at the International Conference on Spatial Cognition (ICSC24), Universitá Europea di Roma, Italy, 09-13 September 2024.

Zona, C. I., and Viganó, S. Low-dimensional spatial mappings of conceptual knowledge in human brain and behaviour. Symposium organized at the International Conference on Spatial Cognition (ICSC24), Universitá Europea di Roma, Italy, 09-13 September 2024.

Zona, C. I., Fischer, M. H.  Mapping conceptual spaces for number retrieval. Talk at the  Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) Meeting, University of York (UK). 03-05 June 2024.

Zona, C. I., Janko, D., and Fischer, M. H. Exploring the behavioral correlates of hexagonal-grid representations of conceptual knowledge. Poster presentation at the “MindBrainBody” (MBB) Symposium, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, Berlin, 09 March 2024.

Zona, C. I., Visually situated thematic-role representations in L1 and L2: An individual difference study. Talk at the “Embodied and Situated Language Processing” (ESLP) Conference, University of Messina, Italy, 30 September 2023.

Zona, C. I., On-line effects of visual and syntactic cues for sentence processing: A focus on methods. Oral presentation at 'Mouse-tracking Workshop', UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 30 March 2023. 

Zona, C. I., Mouse tracking for on-line processing: A focus on data analysis. Oral presentation at 'Friday Primes', Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 25 November 2022.

Zona, C. I. Weighting visual cues for sentence comprehension: a mouse-tracking study. Poster presentation at the 28th 'Architecture and Mechanisms of Language Processing' (AMLaP) Conference, York, UK, 7-9 September 2022.

Zona, C. I., & Reifegerste, J. Weighting visual and linguistic cues for sentence comprehension: a lifespan study. Oral presentation at the 22nd 'Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology' (ESCoP), Lille, France,  29 August-1 September 2022. 

Zona, C. I., & Reifegerste, J. The weighting of visual-cue information during sentence comprehension across the lifespan. Poster presentation at the 2022 'Cognitive Aging Conference', Atlanta GA, USA, 7-10 April 2022.

Education

• April 2023 - June 2026: Post-doctoral researcher, Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group, Dept. of Psychology, University of Potsdam;
• October 2019 - February 2024: Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Potsdam2017/2018: Erasmus exchange at Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group, Dept. of Psychology, University of Potsdam;
• 2016 - 2018: MSc in Cognitive Science, Umeå Universitet, Sweden;
• 2015/2016: Erasmus exchange, Dept. of Linguistics, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin;
• 2014-2018: MA in Germanistics, Uppsala Universitet, Sweden;
• 2009 - 2012: BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures, Universitá degli Studi di Milano, Italy (110/110).