Language Acquisition Laboratory

These pages are demonstration pages of mixed mode deli very for an on-campus course. The curriculum and course structure has changed substantially for 1998, but these pages have been retained here as an example of a particular use of the Web in teaching.

Please Note: This experiment is essentially harmless, but requires human ethics clearance due to the fact that the subjects (young children) are considered to be vulnerable. Please DO NOT collect data until you are clear about Consent Forms and Human Ethics requirements.

Wug Intro Overheads

Wug Intro (Week 3) Summary

This study, looking at the child's command of English plural and tense morphology, replicates in part the very famous experiment carried out by Jean Berko in 1958. Each student experimenter is asked to find and test a child subject (either male or female) between the age of four and six years (that is, between 48 and 72 months, exactly). If a good number of students find a child who is acquiring English in a bilingual setting, then the study will be able to contrast developmental patterns in monolingual and bilingual children.

The elicitation task

Your test booklet contains 18 depictions of fantasy animals and actions. Your task as experimenter is to present each case to your child subject in storylike form so as to introduce a nonsense syllable which is to be the name of the animal or action. The idea is that an attempt to form the plural, or to form the past tense, is to be elicited from the child. The test kit contains 12 "plural situations" (animals in pairs) and 6 "tense situations" (a person or animal carrying out some odd activity). The general form of the elicitation procedure is as follows:

PLURAL

One of the animal pair is introduced, while the other is covered; for example,

"This is a WUG. It's a funny kind of bird whose wings are very tiny, but whose huge big ears can help him fly. You can see that a WUG has very big feet, too. Good for landings!"

The second of the pair is uncovered:

"... and look, here's another WUG. One WUG here, and a second WUG there. So there are two ....."

TENSE

Some background to the action is given, to establish it as a commonplace activity; for example,

"This is a man who knows how to BOD, and he likes to do it all the time. Every morning, before breakfast, he climbs up on his barrel, and he BODS. He will BOD before lunch, too, and in the afternoon, if he can."

The child's attention is drawn to previous occurrences of the activity.

"He did it yesterday, too. First thing, before breakfast, he climbed up on his barrel, and he ......."

The first introduction of the nonsense syllable must be in citation form, that is, without inflections. Your leadup "story" should include several further uses of the syllable, to establish it firmly these uses need not be in citation form (though, of course, there cannot be any prior mention of the plural or tense form that you are eliciting from the child). It's likely that the child will echo the nonsense syllable when you first say it. Allow the opportunity to do that; he or she is checking that you've been correctly heard.

Stimulus items

Use the Back button to return from the .gif files accessed through this table to the table itself.
(Note that these drawings were done by Rosemary Williams of the Department of Psychology - please request permission to use them for anything other than the PSY2011 Language Acquisition Lab Class - Lisa Wise)

Plurals

wug nezz rup sotch bick lish

hoad pedge fot kazh leb tass

Tense

hain bod jeg lart sep poat

Plurals
wug	nezz	rup	sotch	bick	lish
hoad	pedge	fot	kazh	leb	tass
Tense
hain	bod	jeg	lart	sep	poat

Notes on testing a young child

There are a number of things you should think about when you are preparing to test, particularly with a very young child. A child is considered a "vulnerable" subject, easily coerced or pressured, and therefore all care must be exercised to protect the child's interests. You must make sure that the parents are happy about the testing; you must be sure, equally, that the child himself or herself wants to be tested, is comfortable and relaxed, and not overtired, or at all anxious. The drawings of the test kit have been constructed in such a way that they should appeal to a child, and not be frightening. As an experimenter, your job is to make it possible for the child to take the testing as a kind of game. It's for this reason that the phrase eliciting a response from the child is embedded in a story frame.

If the child shows at any point that he or she doesn't want to keep on with the testing, you must stop immediately, and try again at some other time, or find another subject. You should always greet responses with enthusiasm, and never offer correction. When you have worked through all the cases in the booklet, you should stop only if the child is willing to stop if he or she wants to do it all again, or look at the drawings for a second time, or hear more stories, then so be it! Finally, be sure to thank the child for helping. You may offer the booklet to the child.

Data recording

The data you record for each case will be of two kinds; some specifically relates to the point at issue, that is, what kind of response the child produces for plural or tense; the other is a record of any spontaneous comments, since this may be relevant to any account of the child's success/failure with that instance. If, say, the child insists that your "wug" looks precisely like a midget eagle, it is not relevant that something other than the form "wugz" is produced. In the record sheets which are attached, there is space allowed for each kind of data.

You should record also the child's age and sex, whether or not he or she attends school or preschool, whether (and what) languages other than English are spoken at home (or in the child's immediate community, e.g., the extended family). Is a language other than English spoken by the child as well as to the child? And, if there is use of a language other than English, find out which language is most commonly used with and/or by the child. Some of this information is probably best obtained from the parents you should remember that a child is not always a reliable informant!

Read the Berko (1958) paper before you launch yourself into testing. It's on reserve in the BioMedical Library; additional copies are located in the 6th floor laboratory file. You will return data in the form requested by Friday 11th, April, 12 noon.

Electronic submission of data

Please do not use before 24th March 1997

References

Basic reference

Berko, J. (1958). The child's learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150177.

General background

Abramovitch, R., Freedman, J. L., Thoden, K., & Nikolich, C. (1991). Children's capacity to consent to participation in psychological research: empirical findings. Child Development, 62, 1100-1109.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Collins, P. and Blair, D. (1984) An introduction to language. Australian Edition. Sydney: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. (Chapter 4, "Morphology: the words of language", pp. 114137).
Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with two languages: An introduction to bilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (See, particularly, Chapter 4 "The bilingual child", pp. 167227).

Additional references

Anisfeld, M., & Tucker, G. R. (1968). English pluralisation rules of six year old children. Child Development, 38, 12011217.
Graves, M. F., & Koziol, S. (1971) Noun plural development in primary grade children. Child Development, 42, 1165-1173.
Reich, P. A. (1986). Language development. (See, particularly, pp. 143 147, "Acquisition of morphological variation").

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