Jean Berko Gleason - Wug test
- The aim of the experiment was to investigate the acquisition of plural-formation and other rules of grammar.
- They used non-sense words in order to avoid the possibility that the children only memorized the words.
- Age between 4-7
- One of these word was WUG (a mythical little creature that looks rather like a bird) which gave the name of the test.
- The test includes a set of questions about plural form and conjugations, possessives and other inflectional morphemes.
- “This is a wug.” Then we showed them another picture and said, “Now there’s another one. There are two of them. There are two….??”
Sources
- http://jeanberkogleason.com/?page_id=15
- Jean Berko - The Child's Learning of English Morphology, 1958
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/blogposts/whats-a-wug/
The WUG- test is a an experiment in linguistics, created by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958.
It was designed as a way to investigate the acquisition of the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English-speaking children.
Results
- Children - from the age of 4 - have implicit knowledge about English grammar (plural, verb tenses, possessives...).
- No difference between girls and boys.
- Difference in age: first graders did better than preschoolers
Thank you for your attention!