Key Case Studies Flashcards
Who carried out the ‘fis’ study?
Berko and Brown
What did the study try to answer?
This study tried to answer whether phonological mistakes show that children either… 1. Don’t understand the correct pronunciation of a word 2. Understand the word, but are physically incapable of pronouncing it
What did Berko and Brown do?
They spoke to a boy who had a toy fish, which he called a ‘fis’ (substitution)
- Adult: what’s this? Child: a fis. Adult: is it your fis? Child: no.
- Adult: what’s this? Child: a fis. Adult: is it your fish? Child: yes, it is my fis.
What does the study suggest?
That 2 was the case- the issue lay with the child’s physical ability to pronounce the ‘sh’ phoneme, rather than a misunderstanding of the correct pronunciation. Meaning children may be able to understand a word but may not be able to say it.
What was Berko’s ‘wug’ test?
This is a wug, there are two ____
Berko asked children to predict the plural of ‘wug’
What did the ‘wug’ test show?
76% of the 5 year olds said ‘wugs’, suggesting children were generalising grammatical rules by themselves and applying them in new contexts.
Who looked for patterns in children’s first 50 words?
Nelson
What did nelson find?
- 60% of the words were naming words (nouns)
- verbs were the second most common
- modifiers came third
- social words were least common e.g hello, more, bye
Who was Genie?
A feral child who was not taught language until the age of 13. She acquired vocabulary quickly, but struggled to learn grammatical rules. This supports Noam Chomskys idea about a ‘critical period’ because she struggled as she didn’t learn language until later in life.
Who studied about Jim the child with deaf parents?
Bard and Sachs
How did having deaf parents affect Jim?
Jim could hear so he would watch a lot of television and listened to the radio, therefore receiving frequent language input. However, his progress was limited until a speech therapist was enlisted to work with him.
Which theory does Jims case study support?
Bruner, because he highlights the importance of adults in a children’s development in language and without this Jim struggled to learn fully.
What did Jim have a poverty of?
A poverty of stimulus.
What did Cruttenden study?
He compared adults and children listening to football scores being announced and found that adults were far more successful than the children (less than 7 years old) at predicting the results based on intonation.
How did Cruttenden eliminate the adults knowledge of teams?
He used obscure teams that the adults wouldn’t have known.
