MARELLI MARCO

Role
Full Professor  
Academic disciplines
General Psychology (PSIC-01/A)
Scientific-Disciplinary Group:
GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY, NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PSYCHOMETRICS (11/PSIC-01)
Office phone
Room:
  • U06, Floor: 4, Room: 4080
Reception hours

Thursday 14.00-15.00

Biography

2016-today: Researcher at the Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca
2016: Researcher at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium
2012-2016: Post-doctoral fellow at the COMPOSES lab, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento
2007-2011: Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, Linguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicoccai
2010: Visiting Ph.D. student at the Centre for Comparative Psycholinguistics, University of Alberta, Canada
2005-2007: Master in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Milano-Bicocca
2002-2005: Bachelor in Psychological Science and Techniques, University of Milano-Bicocca

Research

My research interests pertain to the processing of written words and how information is stored and represented within the semantic system. I am also interested in the the interplay between these processes and other domains in human cognition, such as perception, action, and reasoning. These topics are investigated by combining experimental techniques (reaction times, analysis of eye-movements in reading, explicit judgments) with computational approaches (learning models, vector space models).

 

Research areas:

  • Computational modelling in psycholinguistics
  • Representation and learning in distributed models (distributional semantics in particular)
  • Semantic, morphological, and orthographic effects in word recognition
  • Contextual effects in reading

Publications

  • Petilli, M., Rodio, F., Günther, F., Marelli, M. (2026). Visual search and stimulus similarity: Modelling search efficiency with hierarchical visual features. Intervento presentato a: 46th European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology (EWCN) - January 26-30, Bressanone, Italy. Detail

  • Petilli, M., Rodio, F., Gatti, D., Marelli, M., Rinaldi, L. (2026). Multimodal Prior Knowledge Determines False Memory Formation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. GENERAL, 155(2), 327-343 [10.1037/xge0001852]. Detail

  • Liu, Y., Chen, S., Marelli, M., Qin, Y. (2026). Knowing a translation pair by the cross-linguistic company it keeps: cross-linguistic context consistency shapes semantic overlap in bilingual conceptual representation. JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE, 148(April 2026) [10.1016/j.jml.2025.104729]. Detail

  • Korochkina, M., Marelli, M., Rastle, K. (2026). Morphemes in the wild: Modelling affix learning from the noisy landscape of natural text. JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE, 148(April 2026) [10.1016/j.jml.2026.104746]. Detail

  • Buchanan, E., Cuccolo, K., Heyman, T., Van Berkel, N., Coles, N., Iyer, A., et al. (2026). Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages. NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR, 10(1), 182-201 [10.1038/s41562-025-02254-x]. Detail

Research projects

BraveNewWord-The acquisition of new meanings through novel word learning
Year: 2022
Call: ERC- Consolidator Grant - 2022
Grantors: EUROPEAN COMMISSION
PNRR per la Missione 4, componente 2 Investimento 1.1- Avviso 104/2022 | The World in Words: Moving beyond a spatiocentric view of the human mind (acronym: WoWo)
Year: 2022
Call: Bando PRIN 2022
Grantors: MINISTERO DELL'UNIVERSITA' E DELLA RICERCA (MUR)
The acquisition of new meanings through novel word learning
Year: 2022
Call: FAQC 2022 - seconda finestra
Grantors: Università degli Studi di MILANO-BICOCCA
MARELLI-Fondo per il finanziamento delle attività base di ricerca
Year: 2017
Call: FFABR 2017
Grantors: M.I.U.R. - MINISTERO DELL'ISTRUZIONE, DELL'UNIVERSITA' E DELLA RICERCA - UFFICIO I - Bilancio e Contabilita'. Coordinamento staff della Direzione
Sulla strada per la multimodalità - primi passi di un modello multimodale per il sistema concettuale umano
Year: 2017
Call: 2017-037 - AVVISO CONGIUNTO PER L’INCREMENTO DELL’ATTRATTIVITÀ DEL SISTEMA DELLA RICERCA LOMBARDO E DELLA COMPETITIVITÀ DEI RICERCATORI CANDIDATI SU STRUMENTI DELL’EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL - ERC” edizione 2017
Grantors: FONDAZIONE CARIPLO, REGIONE LOMBARDIA

Awards

Awards

  • Outstanding Article Award by Language Learning, Language Learning, Wiley, 2025
  • Albert Valdman Award, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Cambridge University Press, 2024
  • ACL outstanding paper award, Association for Computational Linguistics, 2023
  • Premio miglior tesi di dottorato in psicologia, AIP - Associazione Italiana di Psicologia, 2012

Editorial boards

  • Editor di rivista, collana editoriale, enciclopedia - , 2023
  • Membro del Comitato Editoriale - THE MENTAL LEXICON, 2022
  • Membro del Comitato Editoriale - MORPHOLOGY, 2020
  • Associate Editor di rivista o collana editoriale - BEHAVIOR RESEARCH METHODS, 2020

Research and teaching assignments

  • Ricercatore universitario a t.d. - Università degli Studi di MILANO-BICOCCA, 2016 - 2019
  • Ricercatore all estero - Ghent University, 2016