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The principal members of our team鈥攁ll established university researchers and members of the 鈥攕hare the common goal of stimulating creativity and making the maximum use of our joint resources to achieve our objective of broadening and deepening our understanding of multilingualism. All members contribute significantly to multiple research themes, ensuring a truly interdisciplinary focus. As a result, we have the breadth and depth of expertise to identify the most probing and critical issues in multilingualism across the lifespan (from early infancy to aging) and the cutting-edge tools and techniques to address them.
Team Leader:
Team Members:
Dr. Shari Baum 鈥� Dr. Krista Byers-Heinlein 鈥� Dr. Xiaoqian Chai听鈥� Dr. Marina Doucerain听鈥� Dr. Annie Gilbert 鈥� Dr. Leah Gosselin 鈥� Dr. Denise Klein 鈥� Dr. Gigi Luk 鈥� Dr. Natalie Phillips 鈥� Dr. Linda Polka
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Dr. Debra Titone
Contact Information
Email address: debra.titone [at] mcgill.ca
Debra Titone, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Language and Multilingualism, is a Professor and Director of the听Language and Multilingualism Lab听in the听Department of Psychology听at 海角社区. She has extensive experience conducting research with special populations and with using eye movement methods to study bilingualism in younger and older adults. Dr. Titone鈥檚 research program investigates whether and how individual differences in executive function, and other cognitive and linguistic capacities, affect bilingual language processing over the lifespan. Dr. Titone is leading the field in investigating how bilingual social networks similarly impact first and second language processing and executive control.
Links:
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Dr. Shari Baum
Contact Information
Email address: shari.baum [at] mcgill.ca
Shari Baum is a Distinguished James 海角社区 Professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders (海角社区) and the founding Director of the CRBLM. Dr. Baum has made a major contribution to the literature on neurolinguistics, with research focused on understanding the neural bases and functions of multiple aspects of speech and language processing. She brings to the team expertise in theoretical linguistics, speech production and perception, and language neuroscience. Dr. Baum serves as the 鈥楻esponsable鈥� for the team, drawing on her extensive experience in managing research teams and drawing together interdisciplinary investigators.
Links:
Departmental Website
Neurolinguistics Laboratory
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Dr. Krista Byers-Heinlein
Contact Information
Email address: K.Byers [at] concordia.ca
Krista Byers-Heinlein is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Concordia University, holding the Concordia University Research Chair in Bilingualism from 2014鈥�2020. She is also a founding member of the governing board of the ManyBabies consortium and led two of its major projects. Her research program investigates language, cognitive, and social development in bilingual infants and toddlers. Dr. Byers-Heinlein, in collaboration with Dr. Polka, established the Montr茅al Bilingual Infant corpus based on day-long home recordings of bilingual infants鈥� lives. She brings expertise in cutting-edge tools and open science practices to promote collaboration and transparency in behavioral research, including experiments on real-time language processing, census-based population analysis, and artificial intelligence approaches.
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Dr. Xiaoqian Chai
Contact Information
Email address: xiaoqian.chai [at] mcgill.ca
Xiaoqian Chai, a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, is an Assistant Professor at 海角社区 and a core member of the McConnell Brain Imaging Center at the Montr茅al Neurological Institute. She uses multimodal brain imaging methods as well as publicly available datasets to investigate the interplay between cognitive development, brain maturation, plasticity, and second language learning. Dr. Chai鈥檚 laboratory is currently expanding its research program to include pediatric populations and is launching a longitudinal, multimodal imaging study designed to profile the developmental trajectory of brain networks in bilingual school-aged children.
Links:
Departmental Website
Chai Laboratory
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Dre. Marina Doucerain
Contact
Courriel: doucerain.marina [at] uqam.ca
Marina Doucerain est professeure de psychologie sociale 脿 l鈥橴niversit茅 du Qu茅bec 脿 Montr茅al (UQAM) et directrice du Laboratoire Culture, Identit茅 et Langue (CIEL). Ses recherches portent principalement sur la psychologie interculturelle et les dynamiques sociales li茅es 脿 l鈥檌mmigration. Sp茅cialis茅e dans les questions d鈥檃cculturation, de diversit茅 culturelle et de relations intergroupes, elle s鈥檌nt茅resse 脿 la mani猫re dont les individus s鈥檃daptent lorsqu鈥檌ls entrent en contact avec de nouveaux contextes culturels ou sociaux. Les travaux de Dre. Doucerain contribuent 脿 mieux comprendre les d茅fis et les b茅n茅fices des interactions interculturelles au quotidien, en mettant en lumi猫re les m茅canismes psychologiques qui fa莽onnent le vivre-ensemble dans des contextes de grande diversit茅.
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Dr. Annie Gilbert
Contact Information
Email address: annie.c.gilbert [at] mcgill.ca
Dr. Annie C. Gilbert is a research associate at the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at 海角社区. Her research investigates the impact of individual differences in bilingual experience on speech production and segmentation in L1 and L2 using behavioural and electrophysiological paradigms. She earned her Ph.D. in phonetics at Universit茅 de Montr茅al and competed her postdoctoral work in psychology at 海角社区, looking at bilingual speech planning.
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Dr. Leah Gosselin
Contact Information
Email address: leah.gosselin [at] mail.mcgill.ca
Leah Gosselin is the coordinator of The Montreal Bilingualism Initiative. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher (under the supervision of Prof. Debra Titone) in the Department of Psychology at 海角社区. Leah is particularly interested in exploiting naturalistic socioecological paradigms to probe the intersection between bi/multilingualism and cognition. Currently, her work with Prof. Debra Titone engages this research interest by honing-in on digital communication (i.e., typing). For any questions regarding MoBI, please feel free to reach out to Leah directly.
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Dr. Denise Klein
Contact Information
Email address: denise.klein [at] mcgill.ca
Denise Klein, current Director of the CRBLM, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and a Neuropsychologist at the Montr茅al Neurological Institute (海角社区). Dr. Klein is an expert on the neural bases of bilingualism and conducted some of the first neuroimaging investigations of bilingual language representation. She has published ground-breaking work over the past two decades, by combining behavioural methods with task-based functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to investigate how neural recruitment may be influenced by age of acquisition, proficiency, and the distinctive characteristics of languages. More recently, she has focused on developing expertise with techniques such as voxel-based morphometry (VBM), cortical thickness measures, diffusion tensor tractography, and resting-state fMRI.
Links:
Departmental Website
Klein Laboratory
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Dr. Gigi Luk
Contact Information
Email address: gigi.luk [at] mcgill.ca
Gigi Luk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology (海角社区). Dr. Luk has established a research program to understand the cognitive and neural processes relevant to bilingualism and to promote a culturally responsive environment in educational settings, cultivating respect and inclusion for linguistic diversity. These goals guide her laboratory鈥檚 research projects in three directions: (1) characterizing bilingualism beyond English language proficiency in schools and in communities; (2) examining bilingualism and cognitive skills supporting language and literacy outcomes; and (3) establishing the neural correlates of learning new information in learners with diverse language experiences.
Links:
Departmental Website
Bilingualism, Experience and Education Laboratory
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Dr. Natalie Phillips
Contact Information
Email address: natalie.phillips [at] concordia.ca
Natalie Phillips is a Professor of Psychology at Concordia University, Fellow of the Science College, and the Concordia University Research Chair (Tier 1) in Sensory-Cognitive Health in Aging and Dementia. She is currently the Associate Scientific Director of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging and is one of the principal developers of the Montr茅al Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). Dr. Phillips is also a recognized expert in the use of electroencephalogram (EEG) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to examine cognitive function as it relates to multilingualism. Her current line of work examines the impact of multilingualism on cognitive reserve and brain anatomy in persons with or at risk for Alzheimer鈥檚 disease.
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Dr. Linda Polka
Contact Information
Email address: linda.polka [at] mcgill.ca
Linda Polka is a Professor and Graduate Program Director at the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders (海角社区). She is also a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and former Chair of their Speech Communication division. Dr. Polka鈥檚 research program examines speech perception development during infancy and how it is shaped by language experience. She has contributed foundational knowledge on how infants perceive phonetic segments and how they process fluent speech in multilingual environments. Dr. Polka鈥檚 laboratory, in collaboration with Dr. Byers-Heinlein, established the Montr茅al Bilingual Infant corpus, the first audio archive of the language environment of bilingual infants in their everyday lives in Canada.
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