Federica Bulgarelli (she/her/hers)

n my research, I seek to understand how learners process the incredibly variable input they receive. In the case of language learning, learners encounter input that varies along many dimensions. For example, words in the real world sound different every time they are produced, even when spoken by a single talker, and variability increases exponentially between different talkers. Further, linguistic input can vary when learners encounter different dialects or languages. My research program explores how the process and outcome of learning are shaped by inevitable variability in linguistic experience.

I investigate these questions in developmental populations (infants and young children) as well as adults, using both experimental techniques (looking time paradigms, eye tracking) and corpus methods. Ongoing and future projects will continue to investigate how infants process talker and accent variability during the early stages of word learning, and whether language background (monolingually or bilingually raised) or experience with different speakers (e.g. other children, accented speakers) influences how learning occurs. Current projects in the lab focus on how infants process speech from older children (e.g. their siblings!), how toddlers and adults process speech in noisy environments, and whether preschoolers and adults choose to learn words from multiple talkers and how that influences their learning.

• PhD, Pennsylvania State University, Cognitive Psychology and Language Science (2018)

• Exceptional Scholar - Young Investigator; University at Buffalo; 2026-06-24;
• Rising Star; APS (Association for Psychological Science); 2025-02-28;
• Ruth Kirschtein Postdoctoral Fellowship; National Institutes of Health; 2019-11-01;
• Dissertation Grant; Language Learning; 2018-01-01;
• Graduate Research Fellowship Program; National Science Foundation; 2015-05-01;

• Bulgarelli, F. (2026). Beyond adult speech: why language development research should consider speech from children. Child Development Perspectives aadaf004
• Samimifar, M., Bulgarelli, F. (2026). Decoding child speech in silence and noise: The type of background noise shapes adults’ processing. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 88(1), 30
• Bulgarelli, F., Barry, S., Bergelson, E. (2024). Attending to talker characteristics: word learning and recognition in monolingually- and multilingually-raised infants. Cognitive Development, 72, 101508.
• Bulgarelli, F., Bergelson, E. (2024). Linking acoustic variability in the infants' input to their early word production. Developmental Science, 27(6)
• Bulgarelli, F., & Bergelson, E. (2022). Talker variability shapes early word representations in English-learning 8-month-olds. Infancy, 27(2), 341-368.

• The Influence of Child-Produced Speech on Infant Language Development; Federal Government; National Institutes of Health; Awarded; (08/01/2024-07/31/2026)