UofT Mississauga Studies of Perception, Cognition, and Language

New research shows that children may exhibit signs of accent-based biases as early as age five.

“The biases become stronger with age,” says Psychology at U of T Mississauga professor Elizabeth Johnson.

Read more 🚸 https://bit.ly/3MbXfbH

cahs-acss.ca

Many parents are concerned about the effects of the pandemic and Ontario’s subsequent lockdowns on their child’s development. 🦠 The CLASS Lab's very own Priscilla Fung investigated how the pandemic impacted children’s vocabulary development by comparing the vocabulary scores of infants and toddlers before and after the pandemic.

Our study shows that the impact of the pandemic depends on the family’s socioeconomic status - while there is no measurable change in children's vocabularies from middle- to upper-class families, vocabulary development in toddlers from lower-income families has been delayed.

The pandemic resulted in increased screen time and decreased reading time, and we know that interactive screen time and reading are related to vocabulary development. So, as we begin to return to “normal” after COVID-19, ensure that you take the time to interact and read with your child! 📚✨

If you are interested in participating in future studies and registering your child to become a Junior Scientist 🔬, visit our website here: https://www.classlab.psycholinguistics.ca/parents

May 2 |

For more than 20 years, psychology professor Elizabeth Johnson has tried to answer many questions related to how babies and children acquire language.

Reading babies' minds: UTM professor examines how infants learn language 🍼 https://bit.ly/3hv0fS8

research by Anna Kosovicheva & Benjamin Wolfe examines ways to make vehicle safety alerts more effective.

"...while complicated engineering solutions can be effective, simple alerts can be effective too,” says Kosovicheva.
In fact, simple vehicle safety alerts can be as effective as complicated warning systems, they found.
Read more: 🚗 https://bit.ly/3KdEByA

'While the mind may be a highly efficient information processor, it’s far from perfect. But I believe there are ways we can make it better.”
Psychology prof Keisuke Fukuda aspires to read the mind as part of his research into memory.

🧠 https://bit.ly/3ASzKOn

Thanks to recent funding, Psychology at U of T Mississauga professor Elizabeth Johnson will be able to delve deeper into the mysteries of language acquisition and tap into the minds of infants as young as six months old.

"We can look at how the way their brain responds to different words early on in development at six months of age, and how that might predict how well they’re speaking and how many words they’ll know when they’re a toddler, or when they’re older.”

🚼 https://bit.ly/3hv0fS8

University of Toronto Mississauga Infant and Child Studies Centre

Babies prefer a familiar tune – even if it’s sung by a stranger: U of T study Early life for infants is surrounded by music and song. But does it matter who is doing the singing? A new study by researchers at the University of Toronto finds that, when it comes to music, infants prefer to listen to familiar tunes – even if sung by an unfamiliar voice.

podcast spotlight 🔦

UTM Research podcast features Psychology at U of T Mississauga Prof Samuel Ronfard. 🧠

Explore how children come to understand ideas and their intuitive theories about how the world works.

Subscribe > https://bit.ly/3aW2dGb

What do you hear? Why a resurfaced audio illusion is dividing the internet again As a resurfaced audio clip that can be heard as two different words divides social media users once again, an expert says whether someone hears 'brainstorm' or 'green needle' changes depending on which word they think about.

Professor Keisuke Fukuda speaks with UTM's View to the U Podcast about his work on visual working memory, research during COVID, and working from home.

https://soundcloud.com/user-642323930/keisuke-fukuda

You can read about the podcast episode here: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/vp-research/news/what-mind-remembers

A big congratulations to C.L.A.S.S. Lab members Momina Raja (left) and Grace Wang (right) on their acceptances to the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Dalhousie University! We are so proud of both of your achievements in the lab and wish you the very best in your future endeavors!