Lab News

Congratulations to Christopher Khalaf on being awarded the NSERC USRA and to Gabriella Di Maio and Alexandra Maracz on being awarded the SSH UTEA to continue their research this summer.

Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Holly Bradley for being awarded the Stanley Weiss Award in Experimental Psychology as part of the 2025 Eastern Psychology Association Conference.

Dr. Elizabeth Johnson was featured in the January issue of University of Toronto Magazine. Click on the link to read the article entitled "Accents, Bias and Babies' Brains"

We're excited to announce that the CLASS lab has been awarded a new SSHRC IDG Grant entitled "Understanding the link between reading readiness and phonological development."

Congrats to Alexandra & Sophia for winning 1st place at the psychology undergraduate Thesis Talk competition and to Maripaz, Emily & Wardah for winning 1st & 3rd place at the Psychology Research Day poster competition!

Have you ever wondered how well infants can tell apart unfamiliar voices? If so, listen to PhD student Madeleine Yu discuss her research on this topic on the Across Acoustics Podcast.

The CLASS lab would like to welcome our newest member, Dr. Holly Bradley. Holly is a postdoctoral fellow whose research focuses on EEG and language processing in infants.

The CLASS Lab has two fully funded PhD openings for September 2024. If you are interested, don't miss the department applications deadline in early December! Click here for more information.

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!

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!

The CLASS lab has new funding! Dr. Johnson has been awarded a 5-year NSERC grant to study speech development in infants and a 2-year grant from UTM's Research Scholarly Activities Fund to help launch our new infant ERP lab!

After three years, the CLASS Lab is finally re-opening to in-person testing! We can't wait to see our lab filled with families with infants and young children again!

Congratulations to postdoc Dr. Thomas St. Pierre on accepting a professorship at Utrecht Univeristy! We wish him luck as he starts this new chapter of his life and can’t wait to see all the great work he will do in his new position!

Welcome to our newest PhD student, Emily Shroads (left)! And a big congratulations to Jida Jaffan (right) who has been awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship to fund her research on children’s interactions with humans and robots!

Congratulations to PhD student Priscilla Fung for being awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship at the University of Toronto. We look forward to seeing the results of your thesis work on bilingual language development.

Congratulations to Josie Davies (Cardiff University) and Eason Shum (University of Hong Kong) for winning Mitacs Globalink Research Internships to work in our lab this summer!

New paper accepted for publication in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: How sociolinguistic factors shape children's subjective impressions of teacher quality.

New paper accepted for publication (January 2022) in Annual Review of Linguistics: Navigating accent variation: A developmental perspective. 

Our lab has been awarded a new CFI grant entitled Baby Brain and Behaviour Lab (BaBBL):  electrophysiological measures of infant speech and language development.

Congratulations to our postdoctoral researcher Félix Desmeules-Trudel on his new job as a bilingual knowledge mobilization specialist at Research Impact Canada.

Our lab has received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant entitled:  Examining the developmental roots of language-based social biases.

In collaboration with Jessamyn Schertz, we have received an NSERC Research Tools and Infrastructure Grant: Using eye-tracking and in-depth video analysis to understand how speech input relates to speech development.

Congratulations to Priscilla Fung and Madeleine Yu on successfully defending their theses! This is a huge accomplishment and we are so proud of you for your hard work and dedication. 

Congrats to PhD student Priscilla Fung for being awarded a prestigious SSHRC Postdoc Grant and to PhD student Emily Shroads for winning the June and David Scott Fellowship for Research in Child Development.

Welcome to our newest PhD candidate Jade Fok from the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on language acquisition in early childhood bilinguals and the neural processes underlying language development.

We are excited to announce that Sophia & Wardah have been awarded University of Toronto Excellence awards to continue their research in the lab this summer!

New paper published in Cognitive Science: The icing on the cake. Or is it frosting? The influence of group membership on children's lexical choices. 

Congratulations to Josie Davies and Ana Porto on winning 2nd place at the Student Research Symposium on Multilinguism for their poster "Does the Accent of the Experimenter Influence Children's Language Biases?"

Research conducted by PhD candidate Priscilla Fung was featured on U o T News! Click here to read about her study on language development during the pandemic.

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Congratulations to all 12 of our undergraduate students who presented at the 2023 UTM Summer Undergraduate Research Fair! We are so proud of all their hard work.

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!

Congratulations to Maripaz Gonzalez, Henna Lahib & Samira Khattab on winning 3rd place for their poster "The Development of the Other-Accent Effect in Talker Recognition" at the Psychology Undergraduate Research Day.

Congratulations to Kaitlyn Harris and Simran Gujjar on winning first place at the UTMSU Undergraduate Research Symposium for their poster "Cartoons Against Linguistic  Bias: Can Exposure to Foreign-Accented Heroes Influence Children's Social Judgements".

Congratulations to post doc Thomas St. Pierre and SSHRC-UTEA recipient Kaitlyn Harris on their talk presented at the Psychonomic Society Meeting in Boston! And congratulations to Thomas on his recent paper published in Cognitive Development!

Ever wondered when gender differences in speech start to develop? If so, listen to PhD student Priscilla Fung discuss her research on gendered speech on the Across Acoustics Podcast.

Congratulations to the 8 of our undergraduate students who presented at the 2022 UTM Summer Undergraduate Research Fair!

Good luck to Professor Johnson in her new role as an Associate Editor for the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics!

Congratulations to Kaitlyn Harris (recipient of the SSHRC-UTEA) and Jessica Hira (recipient of the NSERC-USRA)! These prestigious awards will enable Kaitlyn and Jessica to carry out their own research in our lab this summer!

New paper accepted for publication in Language Learning and Development: The influence of accent distance on perceptual adaptation in toddlers and adults.

Congratulations to Thomas St. Pierre and Félix Desmeules-Trudel on successful presentations at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD).

New paper published in Cognitive Science: Looking for wugs in all the right places: Children's use of prepositions in word learning.

New paper published in Cognitive Science: The other accent effect in talker recognition: now you see it, now you don't. 

Dr. Félix Desmeules-Trudel was interviewed by Marjorie April from Y a pas deux matins pareils CBC/Radio-Canada ICI Toronto!