Child Language and Speech Studies Lab
About Us
How do children master language so quickly and seemingly effortlessly, while adults often struggle for years to simply learn to order a meal in a new language? In Dr. Elizabeth Johnson’s Child Language and Speech Studies (CLASS) Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), we examine the perceptual, cognitive, and social factors that contribute to children’s rapid mastery of human language. Our approach is inherently interdisciplinary, bringing together insights and methodologies from developmental psychology, various branches of linguistics, and the speech sciences. Importantly, much of our research is inspired by the linguistic diversity in the community surrounding UTM.
Latest Lab News
The CLASS Lab has two fully funded PhD openings for September 2024. If you are interested, don't miss the department application deadline in early December! Click here for more information.
September 2023
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Congratulations to all 12 of our undergraduate students who presented at the 2023 Summer Undergraduate Research Fair! We are so proud of all their hard work.
August 2023
The CLASS lab is going to Australia! Congratulations to PhD students Madeleine, Priscilla, and Emily and BA student Kaitlyn who all have presentations at CogSci 2023. And an extra congrats to Priscilla for winning a travel award to fund her trip!
July 2023
The CLASS lab is heading to Europe! We'll be presenting two talks at ViLA5 in Belgium. And Dr. Johnson will be celebrating her mentor Dr. Anne Cutler at the Canteen of Cutlery Workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen!
June 2023
The editor of JEP: HPP selected PhD candidate Madeleine Yu's paper "Who speaks kid? How experience with children does (and does not) shape the intelligibility of child speech" as an Editor's Choice selection. Congrats!
May 2023