Nativism Studies

Wug Test - Berko-Gleason

• Method: children shown imaginary creatures called ‘‘wugs’’ - asked to make plurals or past tense forms

• Findings: children correctly said ‘‘wugs’’ (plural) or other forms even though they had never heard of the words.

• Significance: supports the idea that children internalise grammatical rules

Critical Period Hypothesis

• Purpose: To investigate whether there is an optimal biological window for language acquisition

• Finding: Children exposed to language before puberty typically acquire it fluently; those exposed later struggle

• Significance: Suggests that language acquisition is biologically constrained - supporting nativism

Pinker’s Study on Regular v Irregular Verbs

• Purpose: examine how children learn past-tense verbs

• Method: observed children producing both regular (walk - walked) and irregular verbs (go - went) verbs

• Finding: children often overgeneralise rules (goed, bringed) showing that children apply learned rules than imitate speech

• Significance: Provides evidence for an innate grammar system where children actively infer linguistic rules.

Gleitmans Verb Learning Studies

• Purpose: Examine whether children can learn the meanings of words purely from situational context

• Method: observed caregivers and children, noticing how often situational cues alone were enough to reveal verb meanings

• Findings: Situational context was often too ambiguous for children to reliably infer verb meanings; they still learned verbs accurately

• Significance: shows that environmental input is insufficient on its own, supporting nativist claims that they rely on innate linguistic knowledge.