Lab Director - Daniela O'Neill
All research at the Children's Communication Lab is all conducted under the supervision of professor Daniela O'Neill, who is a professor in Developmental Psychology in the University of Waterloo's Psychology Department. She is also the Founder and Director of the MASc program in Developmental and Communication Science.
Daniela founded the lab (formerly named the University of Waterloo Centre for Child Studies) in 1996. She received her undergraduate BASc degree in Psychology from the University of Toronto in 1989 and her doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Stanford University in 1993. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Medical Research Council Cognitive Development Unit in London, England for two years before joining the developmental faculty at the University of Waterloo in 1995.
The research at the centre has been supported by grants awarded to Daniela from the Natural sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and a Premier's Research Excellence award. Daniela is the developer and author of the Language Use Inventory (LUI), a standardized parent-report measure to assess pragmatic language development in children 18 to 47 months of age that is used internationally by clinicians and researchers. (Commercial LUI site at LanguageUseInventory.com). Current outreach activities in the lab centered around board games for early language and literacy learning is supported by a grant from the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation,
Daniela is also a Member of the Board of Directors, Canadian Children's LIteracy Foundation, Toronto and a member of the Advisory Board, Planet Word Museum, Washington, DC.
Contact Daniela at doneill@uwaterloo.ca
Daniela is on Bluesky @danielaoneill.bsky.social (after 14 years on twitter @daniela_oneill) where she regularly curates and posts new research and information from around the world relevant to children's language, cognitive and social development of interest to parents, teachers, academics, and professionals working with children. Daniela is also on and LInkedIn and the lab is on Instagram @Talk2ThriveLab
Current members of the Children's Communication Lab
In Fall 2025, I am thrilled to welcome Erin McMahon and Maia Aurini to our MASc Developmental and Communication Sciences in Fall 2025 and I'm thrilled to have you back in the lab as graduate students!
Current undergraduate assistants in the lab assisting largely with our Board Game outreach activities are Lucas Betts and and Olivia Vento.
In addition to Lucas and Olivia, I sincerely thank Maia Aurini, Anna Bien, Layla Hussein, Aimee Landry, Erin McMahon, and Catelyn Ritchie for their help with with our Board Game outreach activities over the past 2 years and wish you all much success as you move on to further studies and pursuits now that you have graduated!
Lab Alumni
Over 100 students at the undergraduate, graduate, or postdoctoral level have been part of the research and outreach activities of the lab over my years at the University of Waterloo. I am very proud of the success of former alumni of the lab who have gone on to:
- positions at other universities as faculty members (Concordia University; University of Ottawa; Yale University)
- positions in research at various institutions (Harvard University; The Hospital for Sick Children; Ottawa School Board; Waterloo Region District School Board)
- positions within community and health organizations and Foundations (Canadian Children's Literacy Foundation, Strong Start; Health Nexus Best Start)
- teaching at the elementary school level
- positions in industry (Research in Motion)
- continued professional and graduate-level studies in a variety of disciplines including clinical and counselling psychology, divinity, law, and medicine
- further studies in speech-language pathology at many different institutions (Dalhousie University; Duke University; McMaster University; Mohawk College; University of Toronto; Queen's University; SUNY-Fredonia; Yale University, Western University, and Wilfrid Laurier University)