
Current Lab Members
Fall 2021


Lab Director
Dr. Johnson received her undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester where she majored in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and completed a Take Five program in Developmental Biology & Evolution. She then went on to earn her PhD in Psychological & Brain Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University. During her final year as a PhD student, Dr. Johnson spent two semesters at the Speech Group at MIT. Dr. Johnson then accepted a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Dr. Johnson is now a Canada Research Chair in Spoken Language Acquisition and Professor of Psychology at UTM. She is also Director of the University of Toronto's Tri-Campus Graduate Program in Psychology. The main goal of her research program is to understand how young children acquire their native language.


Postdoctoral Researcher
Research Interests: Adaptation, processing L2 speech, language attitudes, reference, influence of extralinguistic factors on processing in children and adults


PhD Candidate (Year 3)
Research Interests: Language acquisition in early childhood bilingualism, relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development


PhD Candidate (Year 3)
Research Interests: Multilingual effects on language acquisition and perception, speaker recognition, music and language processing, auditory-visual speech processing


Jida Jaffan
PhD Candidate (Year 2), co-supervised with Craig Chambers
Research Interests: Psycholinguistics! How individual differences (e.g. empathy) can impact child language development and how children and robots use language to interact and learn


Lisa Hotson
Research Lab Co-ordinator
Research Experience: Research assistant in Dr. Laurel Trainor's Auditory Development Lab, research assistant in Dr. Sandra Trehub's Music Development Lab.


Bailey Agard
Research Assistant (former SROP student)
Education: Specialized Honours BA in Cognitive Science, York University
Expected Year of Graduation: 2022


Kaitlyn Harris
SSHRC-UTEA Scholar
Education: English major, French and Education Studies minors, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2023


Jessica Hira
NSERC-USRA Scholar
Education: HSBC, Neuroscience Specialist, Biology for Health Sciences Major, Chemistry Minor, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2023


Danyel Ore
IRP Student
Education: Psychology Specialist, majoring in Criminology, Law & Society, minoring in Sociology, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2023


Leena Saleh
ROP Student
Education: Double major in Political Science and Sociology, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2025


Alexandra Hawse
ROP Student
Education: Forensic Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2024


Liaba Jat
ROP Student
Education: Psychology Major Program, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2023


Maripaz Gonzalez
ROP Student
Education: Majoring in Biology for Health Sciences, minoring in Art History and Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2024


Leah Rudmik
ROP Student
Education: Majoring in Psychology and Linguistics, University of Toronto Mississauga
Expected Year of Graduation: 2024


Eason Shum
Mitacs Globalink Research Intern
Education: BA with majors in English Studies and Translation, University of Hong Kong
Expected Year of Graduation: 2023