The wug test
E694781
The wug test is a classic psycholinguistic experiment that demonstrates children’s ability to apply grammatical rules to novel, made-up words.
Statements (44)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
morphology test
ⓘ
psycholinguistic experiment ⓘ |
| academicDiscipline |
cognitive science
ⓘ
developmental psychology ⓘ |
| alsoKnownAs | Berko wug test NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| basedOn | novel words ⓘ |
| contrastsWith | purely imitation-based accounts of language learning ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| creator | Jean Berko Gleason NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| demonstrates |
children’s ability to generalize grammatical rules
ⓘ
overgeneralization of morphological rules ⓘ productivity of morphological rules ⓘ rule-governed nature of language acquisition ⓘ |
| expectedResponse | "wugs" ⓘ |
| field |
linguistics
ⓘ
psycholinguistics ⓘ |
| focusesOn |
children’s grammatical knowledge
ⓘ
inflectional morphology ⓘ morphology ⓘ plural formation ⓘ rule-based language learning ⓘ |
| hasVariant |
tests of derivational morphology with nonce bases
ⓘ
tests of past tense formation with nonce verbs ⓘ |
| inception | 1958 ⓘ |
| influenced |
studies of language acquisition in other languages
ⓘ
subsequent research on morphological development ⓘ |
| keyQuestion | "Now there are two of them. There are two _____." ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainStimulus | the nonce word "wug" ⓘ |
| notableFeature |
focus on novel items to avoid memorized forms
ⓘ
use of pictures to elicit inflected forms ⓘ |
| procedure |
children are asked to complete a sentence with the plural form
ⓘ
children see a picture of a single "wug" ⓘ children then see a picture of two of the same creature ⓘ |
| publishedIn | Word (journal) NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| supportsTheory | rule-based models of language acquisition ⓘ |
| typicalAgeGroup |
early school-age children
ⓘ
preschool children ⓘ |
| typicalParticipants | English-speaking children ⓘ |
| usedIn |
clinical assessment of language disorders
ⓘ
developmental psycholinguistics ⓘ studies of second language acquisition ⓘ |
| uses |
invented lexical items
ⓘ
nonsense words ⓘ |
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.