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
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.
March 2025
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.
February 2025
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"
January 2025
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 precesses underlying language development.
September 2024
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."
June 2024