Matilde Ellen Simonetti, M.Sc.

PhD Candidate · Institute of Psychology · RWTH Aachen University

Cognitive and Experimental Psychology

About

I am a PhD candidate in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology at RWTH Aachen University, supervised by Tanja Roembke and Iring Koch.

My research investigates how people learn words in situations of uncertainty and how language experience—particularly bilingualism—shapes these learning processes. Much of my work uses the cross‑situational word learning paradigm to understand how learners track statistical regularities between words and objects over time.

To study these questions, I combine behavioural experiments with methods such as eye‑tracking to examine learning dynamics in real time.

Research interests

• Statistical word learning, especially cross‑situational word learning
• Bilingual language experience
• Eye‑tracking and moment‑to‑moment learning processes

Community and collaboration

I am a member of GeWoNN (German Word Nerd Network), a network of researchers working on language and reading in German, and of its TRUST Network, which aims to build a transparent, transferable, and sustainable foundation for psycholinguistic reading studies in German.

I also serve on the leadership team of WiCS+ Europe (Widening Inclusivity in Cognitive Science), which supports women and underrepresented researchers in cognitive science.

In 2025, I co-organised the 15th A-Dok Workshop for early-career researchers in cognitive and experimental psychology at RWTH Aachen University, and in 2026 I joined the NextGen Reviewer Mentorship Program of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

Explore

🔗 See the Publications page for my papers and abstracts.
🔗 See the Research page for current projects and research directions.