Erin Quirk received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York with a project investigating predictors of bilingual children’s receptive and expressive language skill. Her research draws not only on her linguistic training but also the years she spent as a teacher to bilingual children in France. One current project asks how bilingual children’s ability to learn similarly sounding words (cognates) in their two languages develops over time. Another line of research focuses on aspects of bilingual experience that predict successful acquisition, such as children’s code-switching habits and the home literacy environment. Erin joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow in March of 2021.

(Languages: English, French, Spanish)

Laia Fibla Reixachs joined the Infant Research Lab as a postdoctoral fellow in May 2021 as part of a longitudinal, two-site study investigating language development in bilingual infants and children in collaboration with Princeton Baby Lab. She received her Ph.D in Developmental Psychology at the University of East Anglia. Her project investigated the relationships between home language input and language processes early in development in infants growing up in diverse cultural settings (i.e., UK and rural India) using a new task. She did a Research Masters in Cognitive Science at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a Bachelor in Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her master thesis focused on bilingualism, word segmentation and computational modelling.  

Languages: Catalan, Spanish, English, French, some German

Charlotte Moore received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Duke University after completing a Masters in Linguistics at the University of Ottawa. Her research program focuses on sources of sound variability in infants’ language environments. She is interested in how bilingual infants manage multiple labels for the same objects and actions. Charlotte’s projects use a mix of corpus analysis, where she finds patterns in large collections of speech to infants and toddlers, and eyetracking, where she can explore the moment-to-moment processing that occurs as young children understand speech. She is seeking to understand the cognitive effects of learning from dual-language input. Charlotte joined the lab as a postdoctoral fellow in September of 2021.

(Languages: English, French)

Nicolás Alessandroni received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). His project investigated the development of conventional tool use during the first year of life and its relation to early conceptual thinking, based on an ecological-enactive, extended, distributed, and semiotic approach to cognition. Originally from Buenos Aires, he obtained his bachelor's degrees in psychology and music from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina) and his MA in Cognitive Psychology and Learning from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) / Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). He joined the lab in January 2022 as a Concordia Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow. As such, he focuses on the intersection between Open Science and infant research.

(Languages: Spanish, English, and French)

Click to access Nicolás’s academic website

Melanie Brouillard is a Ph.D. Student in Clinical Psychology at Concordia University, funded by the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Having grown up in Montreal learning English and French simultaneously, she identified herself as a bilingual from a young age and has been fascinated with the phenomenon ever since. She has proudly been at the Concordia Infant Research Lab since 2013, previously as the research coordinator and now as a graduate student. Her research aims to elucidate how to best support bilinguals' language development, for example, by investigating word learning and language use during bilingual book reading and the factors shaping attitudes relating to bilingualism. Her most recent work examines potential interactions between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and bilingualism in language and executive functioning.

(Languages: English & French)

Click to access Melanie’s academic website

Andrea Sander-Montant is an MA student in psychology at Concordia University, as of September 2019. Originally from Mexico City, Andrea did her undergrad studies in psychology at Universidad Intercontinental and then spent close to five years working in a developmental neuropsychology clinic at two major private hospitals in Mexico City. Her clinical experience in early intervention across multiple diagnoses (especially Autism Spectrum Disorder) gave her a profound appreciation for the necessity of high-quality research, which can translate into better clinical interventions. Currently her research interests are related to the variation in language acquisition across diverse populations, especially bilingual and neurodiverse children.

(Languages: Spanish, English & French)

Melanie López Pérez is a PhD student in Psychology at Concordia University. Melanie grew up as a Spanish-English bilingual in her home country Puerto Rico. She completed her undergraduate studies in Psychology at the University of Puerto Rico and earned her master’s degree in Developmental Psychology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. Throughout her studies, Melanie has developed a keen interest in studying bilingual development. Currently, her research interests lie in studying bilingual language acquisition, bilingual parents’ speech and the phenomenon of code-switching. 

(Languages: Spanish, English & a little German)

Miranda Gómez Díaz is an MA student in Psychology at Concordia University. Miranda grew up in a Spanish-speaking home but received bilingual education from a young age. She completed her undergraduate studies in Clinical Psychology at Universidad de Monterrey and then worked with neurodiverse bilingual children and their families in a clinical setting. This experience granted her a deep understanding of the importance for science-based decisions and shaped her interest in early language development. Currently her research interests are related to vocabulary development in bilingual infants.

(Languages: Spanish, English & French)

Madison Williams graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Honours Psychology from Concordia University, in 2022. Growing up in an English family, and having only learned French in primary school, Madison has always been fascinated by her peers who were exposed to two languages from birth. This intrigue, combined with her passion for research, led her to join the Concordia Infant Research Lab in 2021, as a Research Assistant. Now, she is very eager to be taking on additional responsibilities and developing new research skills as the lab’s Research Coordinator. Madison ultimately plans to pursue a PhD in Experimental Psychology.

(Languages: English, French)

Hilary Killam has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Toronto, with a Minor in French and a Language Citation in Italian. She always enjoyed learning French at school, and in 2006 decided to spend a year in France in order to immerse herself in the language. With a lot of hard work, she learned to speak French as an adult, which certainly came in handy when she unexpectedly moved to Montréal! Most of Hilary’s work experience has been in a clinical setting, managing therapy intakes for a large psychotherapy clinic in Toronto, and now she is excited to take on a new challenge in supporting academic research.

(Languages: English, French & a little Italian)

Tanya Glowacki is currently an undergraduate student at Concordia University pursuing her BA in Honours Psychology. Her interest in working with children stems from her years of experience as a nanny for young infants and children, as well as volunteering in a school setting at the Mackay Centre. Growing up bilingual, and in a family that speaks 6 languages, she has always been fascinated with language acquisition in multilingual individuals and was intrigued by the Concordia Infant Research Lab for its specific field of research. After completing her bachelors, she hopes to pursue Child Psychology or Speech-Language Pathology.

(Languages: English and French)

Kathy Su is currently an undergraduate student at Concordia University completing a BA in Honours Psychology with a minor in Education. Her interest in language development stems from her own experiences of learning three languages at the same time as a child. Attending Chinese school on the weekends and learning English and French during the weekdays, allowed her to meet people who had very different learning experiences and varied language acquisition abilities. Today, she works at an educational institute helping multilingual children of all ages learn English and Math. After her degree, Kathy wishes to pursue a Masters in Occupational Therapy, or School Psychology.

(Languages: English, French, and Cantonese)

Tiana Ferracane is an undergraduate student at Concordia University in the process of completing her BA in Specialization Psychology. Growing up speaking Italian and English, she became extremely interested in how languages develop in multilingual children. Furthermore, her interest in childhood development stems from working with bilingual children with reading and learning deficits. Today, she works as an educational assistant teaching English and Math to Francophone children. After her degree, she plans to pursue graduate studies Clinical Psychology with a focus on children and adolescent therapy.

(Languages: English, French, Italian)

Marya Benaicha is a final year undergraduate student at Concordia University, completing her BSc in Specialization Psychology. Her interest in working with children stems from spending time with her little cousins and working in several summer camps. Among other things, cognitive and social development in kids fascinates her. Speaking three languages and having learned English at only 15 years old, she is also fascinated by children’s capacity to comprehend several languages as early as their first years of life. After her bachelor’s degree, she hopes to pursue graduate studies in clinical child and adolescent psychology.

(Languages: French, English, Arabic)

Alena Vo is a current Linguistics undergraduate at Concordia. Visiting her Canadian father's family in Montreal over the years gave her a taste for learning French, and after spending two years studying psychology in her hometown of Dallas, Texas, she moved to Montreal to join her family and pursue her dreams in linguistic research and translation. She has always held a great passion for learning language and studying how the multilingual brain functions. After graduation, Alena plans to pursue a master's in applied linguistics or psycholinguistics.

(Languages: English, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese)