This lab, started in Fall 2008, is dedicated to understanding the relationship between infants’ everyday language experiences and their language development. We look at what skills infants bring to the task of listening to the language, such as sensitivities to the melodic properties of language, and how these skills influence their ability to learn their first language. Most of our research involves perceptual studies of infants. In these studies, we play sounds and video for infants. By measuring their responses to what they are seeing and hearing, we can learn about what they understand and perceive about the world around them. We examine infants’ behaviours in more natural settings. These include brief play sessions in our laboratory or recordings of language that infants hear in their home environments and analyze different characteristics of those language environments. Some recent topics we have been exploring include the role of infant-directed speech (“babytalk”) in infants’ language experiences, and the impact of material mental health on caregiver-child interactions. The Baby Language Lab is also active in ManyBabies, a largescale, worldwide collaborative research program that examines various aspects of infant cognition, such as social and moral reasoning, and responses to novel and familiar items.
We are always looking for volunteers (babies, children, and their parents or guardians) to come into our lab and participate in our studies. Participants may be asked to fill out some questionnaires, watch brief audio-visual displays and/or engage in a brief play session. You will receive a gift card and/or a small gift from us for participating, as well as parking or bus fare reimbursement, and (we hope) an enjoyable experience in our lab.
Please contact us to learn more. We hope to see you soon!
Lab News
This year we celebrate a number of accomplishments from our students:
- Edidiong Akpan for finishing her Bachelor’s Degree.
- Katerina Porteous, and Maia Kullman for graduating with Honours.
- Rebeca Urizar for graduating with Honours and for being accepted into a Masters program in Developmental Psychology starting Fall 2025.
- Marlea Sabo for being awarded a PURE Summer Research Award.
- Megan Gornik for matching to Manitoba’s Clinical Health Psychology Residency Program, in the Health Stream.
- Sarah Montazeri presented data at the 16th International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL 2024) and at the 24th International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS 2024).
Baby Language Lab in the News
- Megan Gornik joined Faith Fundal on CBC’s Up to Speed Radio Broadcast in April 2025. They discussed her present study that is investigating Maternal Mental Health and its impact on Language Development.
- Megan Gornik was featured on CTV news in April 2025, they also discussed her current research investigating Maternal Mental Health and its impact on Language Development.
- The ManyBabies project that the lab is a part of was featured on CTV news in March 2020.
- A segment on Megan Gornik’s honours thesis project aired on CTV news in December 2019. Her project investigated the development of social reasoning in infants under 10 months old.