Meghan Clayards

Meghan Clayards serves as Associate Professor in McGill University's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Department of Linguistics, with additional affiliation as Regular Member of the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM). Her research laboratory operates from 1085 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Room #201 in Montreal, Quebec, where she directs the Speech Learning Lab investigating speech perception mechanisms.

Education

• PhD, University of Rochester

Research Focus

Dr. Clayards' work centers on phonetic perception variability across individuals and languages, examining how acoustic cues are weighted differently during speech processing. Her research integrates experimental paradigms with computational modeling to investigate native and non-native speech perception, lexical influences on speech processing, and individual differences in second language acquisition. She particularly explores how perceptual adaptation mechanisms interact with cognitive factors to shape speech learning outcomes.

Publication Trends

Recent publications demonstrate sustained investigation into individual differences across diverse linguistic contexts including English, Mandarin, Korean, and Southern Min dialects. Her work increasingly incorporates neural correlates and computational approaches while maintaining focus on cue integration dynamics, tonal perception, and cross-linguistic transfer effects. The research consistently reveals significant inter-subject variability in phonetic processing that challenges uniform models of speech perception.

Research Funding

• SSHRC Insight Grant (2024-2029): "Towards robust models of individual differences in speech perception" as Principal Investigator
• NSERC Discovery Grant (2021-2026): "Cognitive predictors of second language learning success" as Principal Investigator

Research Infrastructure

The Speech Learning Lab employs behavioral testing, eye-tracking, and computational modeling to examine speech perception-production links. Current projects include neural correlates of individual differences in speech processing, computational modeling of perceptual adaptation, and cross-linguistic studies of tonal and vowel category learning with implications for clinical applications in communication disorders.