Jean Berko Gleason
Encyclopedia
Jean Berko Gleason is a Boston University
psycholinguist
best known for having created the Wug Test
. The test, which was designed to investigate the manner in which children acquire grammatical understanding
, was created in 1958. It remains significant in the realms of linguistics
and cognitive development
.
, to parents who had immigrated from Hungary
. She graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1949. She received an A.B. in history
and literature
, an A.M. in linguistics
, and a combined Ph.D. in linguistics
and psychology
, all from Harvard/Radcliffe
. During her graduate education, Berko was advised by Roger Brown
, a pioneer in the field of child language acquisition
. She married the late Andrew Mattei Gleason, a professor of mathematics at Harvard, on 26 January 1959, with whom she subsequently had three daughters.
, 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
.
, where she spent most of her professional career, where she has also served as department chair and director of the Graduate Program in Human Development. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University
, Stanford University
, and at the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
in Budapest. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and of the American Psychological Association
, and served as president of the International Association for the Study of Child Language
from 1990 to 1993. She has been active in the Gypsy Lore Society
, and served as its president from 1996 to 1999; she has also served on the editorial boards of many journals related to language, and as an associate editor of Language. She is also co-editor (with Nan Bernstein Ratner) of two widely-used textbooks, The Development of Language and Psycholinguistics. A festschrift in her honor, Methods for Studying Language Production, was published in 2000.
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
psycholinguist
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
best known for having created the Wug Test
Wug test
The wug test is 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....
. The test, which was designed to investigate the manner in which children acquire grammatical understanding
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, was created in 1958. It remains significant in the realms of linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and cognitive development
Cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development and cognitive psychology compared to an adult's point of...
.
Biography
Jean Berko was born in Cleveland, OhioCleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, to parents who had immigrated from Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. She graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1949. She received an A.B. in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, an A.M. in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, and a combined Ph.D. in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, all from Harvard/Radcliffe
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...
. During her graduate education, Berko was advised by Roger Brown
Roger Brown (psychologist)
Roger William Brown , an American social psychologist, was born in Detroit.-Early Life and Education:...
, a pioneer in the field of child language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
. She married the late Andrew Mattei Gleason, a professor of mathematics at Harvard, on 26 January 1959, with whom she subsequently had three daughters.
Wug Test
Gleason is best known for having created the Wug TestWug test
The wug test is 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....
, 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
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
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
Wug test
The wug test is 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....
”, 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
Language development
Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and...
and cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
.
Career
Gleason is currently a Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology at Boston UniversityBoston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, where she spent most of her professional career, where she has also served as department chair and director of the Graduate Program in Human Development. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and at the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...
in Budapest. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
and of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
, and served as president of the International Association for the Study of Child Language
International Association for the Study of Child Language
The International Association for the Study of Child Language is an academic society for first language acquisition researchers. It was founded in 1970 by a group of prominent language acquisition researchers to promote international and interdisciplinary cooperation in the study of child language...
from 1990 to 1993. She has been active in the Gypsy Lore Society
Gypsy Lore Society
The Gypsy Lore Society was founded in Great Britain in 1888 to unite persons interested in the history and lore of Gypsies and rovers and to establish closer contacts among scholars studying aspects of such cultures. David MacRitchie was one of its founders and he worked with Francis Hindes Groome...
, and served as its president from 1996 to 1999; she has also served on the editorial boards of many journals related to language, and as an associate editor of Language. She is also co-editor (with Nan Bernstein Ratner) of two widely-used textbooks, The Development of Language and Psycholinguistics. A festschrift in her honor, Methods for Studying Language Production, was published in 2000.
Selected bibliography
- Berko, J. (1958). The Child's Learning of English Morphology. Word, 14, 150 177.
- Brown, R., & Berko, J. (1960). Word Association and the acquisition of grammar. Child Development, 31, 1 14.
- Goodglass, H., & Berko, J. (1960). Agrammatism and English inflectional morphology. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 3, 257 267.
- Goodglass, H., Gleason, J. Berko, & Hyde, M. (1970). Some dimensions of auditory language comprehension in aphasia. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 13, 96 606. (Editor's Award)
- Goodglass, H., Gleason, J. Berko, Bernholtz, N.A., & Hyde, M. R. (1972). Some linguistic structures in the speech of a Broca's aphasic. Cortex, 8, 191 212
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1973). Code Switching in Children's Language. In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive * Development and the Acquisition of Language. New York Academic Press, 169-167.
- Gleason, J. Berko, Goodglass, H., Green, E., Ackerman, N., & Hyde, M. R. (1975). The retrieval of syntax in Broca's aphasia. Brain and Language, 2, 451 471.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1975). Fathers and Other Strangers: Men's speech to Young Children. 26th Annual Roundtable, Georgetown University Press, 289-297.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Weintraub, S. (1976). The acquisition of routines in child language. Language in Society, 5, 129 136.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1977). Talking to Children: Some Notes on Feedback. In C. Ferguson and C. Snow (Eds.), Talking to Children: Language Acquisition and Input. Cambridge University Press, 199-205.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1978). The Acquisition and Dissolution of the English Inflectional System. In A. Caramazza and E. Zurif (Eds.), Parallels and Divergencies. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Weintraub, S. (1978). Input Language and the Acquisition of Communicative Competence. In K. Nelson (Ed.), Children's Language, Vol. 1, Gardner Press, 171-222.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1979). Sex differences in the language of children and parents: The early evidence. In O. Garnica and M. King (Eds.), Language, Children, and Society. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press.
- Goodglass, H., Blumstein, S., Gleason, J. Berko, Green, E., Hyde, M, & Statlender, S. (1979). The effect of syntactic encoding on sentence comprehension in aphasia. Brain and Language, 7, 201-209.
- Gleason, J. Berko, Goodglass, H, Obler, L., Green, E., Hyde, M. R., & Weintraub, S. (1980). Narrative strategies of aphasic and normal speaking subjects. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 2 370 382
- Masur, E. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Parent child interaction and the acquisition of lexical information during play. Developmental Psychology, 16, 404 409.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). The acquisition of social speech and politeness formulae. In H. Giles, and W. P. Robinson, P.M. Smith, (Eds.), Language: Social Psychological Perspectives. Pergamon Press, Oxford and New York, 21-27.
- Greif, E. B. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Hi, thanks, and goodbye: More routine information. Language in Society, 9, 159 166.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Reflections: The child as informer. Language Arts, May.
- Bellinger, D. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1982). Sex differences in parental directives to young children. Journal of Sex Roles, 8(11), 1123-1139.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1982). Converging evidence for linguistic theory from the study of aphasia and child language. In L. Obler & L. Menn (Eds.), Exceptional Language and Linguistics. Academic Press.
- Gleason, J. Berko, & Greif, E. B. (1983). Men's speech to young children. In B. Thorne, C. Kramerae, and N. Henley (Eds.), Language, Gender, and Society, 2nd edition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 140-150.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Goodglass, H. (1984). Some neurological and linguistic accompaniments of the fluent and nonfluent aphasias. Topics in Language Disorders, 4(3), 71 81.
- Gleason, J. Berko, Perlmann, R. Y., & Greif, E. B.. (1984). What's the magic word: Learning language through routines. Discourse Processes, 6(2), 493 502.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1984). Exceptional routes to language acquisition. Review of K. Nelson (Ed.), Children's Language. Contemporary Psychology, 29(1), 32 33.
- Gleason, J. Berko (Ed.) (1985). The Development of Language. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Perlmann, R. Y. (1985). Acquiring social variation in speech. In H. Giles and R. N. St Clair (Eds.), Recent Advances in Language, Communication, and Social Psychology. London: Erlbaum, 86-111.
- Gleason, J. Berko & R er, Z. (1985). Aspects of Language Acquisition by Hungarian Gypsy Children. In J. Grumet, (Ed.), Papers from the Fourth and Fifth Annual Meetings, Gypsy Lore Society, North American Chapter. New York: Gypsy Lore Society, 76-83.
- Pan, B. Alexander & Gleason, J. Berko. (1986) The study of language loss: Models and hypotheses for an emerging discipline. Applied Psycholinguistics, 7, 193 206.
- Menn, L. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1986). Babytalk as a stereotype and register: Adult reports of children's speech patterns. In J. A. Fishman et al. (Eds.) The Fergusonian Impact. Vol I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 111 125.
- Kohn, S. E., Wingfield, A., Menn, L., Goodglass, H., Gleason, J. B., & Hyde, M. H. (1987). Lexical retrieval: The tip of the tongue phenomenon. Applied Psycholinguistics, 8, 245 266.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1988) Language and socialization. In F. Kessel (Ed.), The Development of Language and Language Researchers. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 269-280.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Wolf, M. (1988). Child language, aphasia, and language disorder: Naming as a window on normal and atypical language processes. Aphasiology, 2, 289-294.
- Gleason, J. Berko, & Pan, B.A. (1988) Maintaining foreign language skills. In J. Berko Gleason (Ed.) You CAN Take It With You. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents, 1-22.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1991) Language without Cognition. Science, 252, 116-120.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Ratner, N. Bernstein. (Eds.) (1993). Psycholinguistics. Fort Worth: Harcourt, Brace.
- Perlmann, R. Y., & Gleason, J. Berko. (1993). The neglected role of fathers in children=s communicative development. Seminars in Speech and Language, 14, 314-324.
- Gleason, J. Berko, Perlmann, R. Y., Ely, D.,& Evans, D. (1994). The babytalk register: Parents' use of diminutives. In J. L. Sokolov & C. E. Snow (Eds.), Handbook of Research in Language Development Using CHILDES. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1994). The furnishings of the mind are modular. Contemporary Psychology, 39, 3, 314-315.
- Gleason, J. Berko. (1994) Sex differences in parent-child interaction. In C. Roman, S. Juhasz, & C. Miller (Eds.), The Women and Language Debate. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 254-363.
- Tingley, E., Gleason, J. Berko., & Hooshyar, N. (1994) Mothers= lexicon of internal state words in speech to children with Down syndrome and to nonhandicapped children at mealtime. Journal of Communication Disorders, 27, 135-155.
- Ely, R. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1995). Socialization across contexts. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (Eds.), The Handbook of Child Language. Oxford: Blackwell, 251-270.
- Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko & McCabe, A. (1996) "Why didn't you talk to your Mommy, Honey?": Parents' and children's talk about talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction.29, 1, 7-25.
- Gleason, J. Berko, Ely, R., Perlmann, R. Y., & Narasimhan, B. (1996). Patterns of prohibition in parent-child discourse. In D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, & J. Guo (Eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates..
- Leaper, C. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1996). The relationship of play activity and gender to parent and child sex-typed communication. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 19, 689-703.
- Goodglass, H. Wingfield, A., Hyde, M. R., Gleason, J. B., Bowles, N. L., & Gallagher, R.E. (1997). The importance of word-initial phonology in prolonged naming efforts by aphasic patients. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 3 128-138.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Ely, R. (1997). Input and the acquisition of vocabulary: Examining the parental lexicon. In C. Mandell & A. McCabe (Eds.), The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives. New York: Elsevier.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Ratner, N. Bernstein. (1998) Psycholinguistics, 2nd edition. New York: Harcourt Brace. (Published November, 1997).
- Gleason, J. Berko & Melzi, G. (1998). The mutual construction of narrative by mothers and children: Cross cultural observations. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, (1 4), 217 222.
- Ely, R. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1998). What Color is the Cat? Color Words in Parent-Child Conversations. In A. Aksu-Ko, E. Erguvanli-Taylan, A. Sumru Ozsoy, & A. Kuntay (Eds.) Perspectives on Language Acquisition: Selected Papers from the VIIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language. Istanbul: Bogazici University.
- Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko, MacGibbon, A., & Zaretsky, E. (2001). Attention to Language: Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table. Social Development, 10, 3, 355-373.
- Goodglass, H., Wingfield, A., Hyde, M. R., Gleason, J. Berko, & Ward, S. E. (2001). Aphasics= access to nouns and verbs: Discourse Vs. confrontation naming. Brain and Language, 79, 1, 148-150.
- Gleason, J. Berko ( 2003). Language Acquisition: Is it Like Learning to Walk, or Learning to Play the Piano? Contemporary Psychology, 48, 2, 172-174.
- Bernstein Ratner, Nan & Gleason, J. Berko (2003). Psycholinguistics. In G. Adelman & B. H. Smith (Eds). Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, 3rd edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science (CD ROM). Harris, C.H., Aycicegi, A., & Gleason, J. Berko (2003). Taboo Words and Reprimands Elicit Greater Autonomic Reactivity in a First than in a Second Language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 561 579.
- Ely, R., & Gleason, J. Berko. (2006). I=m sorry I said that: Apologies in young children=s discourse. Journal of Child Language, 33, 599-620.
- Gleason, J. Berko, Ely, R., Phillips, B., & Zaretsky, E. (2009). Alligators all around: The acquisition of animal terms in English and Russian. In D. Guo & E. Lieven (Eds.) Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Gleason, J. Berko & Ratner, Nan Bernstein (Eds.) (2009) The Development of Language, 7th Edition. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.