Wug Test
Gleason is best known for having created the wug test, a test of children's knowledge of morphology. She created this test as part of her dissertation research, demonstrating that young children learn important aspects of language by finding patterns in the language that they hear around them, rather than by simply imitating others. Berko (Berko 1958) showed that young children had implicit knowledge of the English patterns for making noun plurals, verb tenses, and other basic morphological modifications to word stems, because they could attach the appropriate endings to nonsense words they could never have heard before. The research approach that she designed, now known familiarly as a “Wug Test”, shows children simple pictures of appealing imaginary creatures and activities, and asks the child questions about them: Here is a wug. Now in this picture, there are two of them. There are two…. This man likes to rick. Yesterday, he …. The resulting research report, The Child's Learning of English Morphology, has been reprinted (to date) in eleven different books of readings in language development and cognitive psychology.
Read more about this topic: Jean Berko Gleason
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“It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humour, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.”
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