fill in the missing word

[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]

>>If the child has fast-mapped the
>>noun or verb, then the formation of the plural or past tense is more likely
>>to go through the normal productive system (whatever that might be).
>>However, if fast-mapping has not been fully achieved and the child is trying
>>to dredge up the word under load, then zero-marking is likely to result.

This is an important point raised by Brian.  But in an earlier study
using nonce
terms with participants with WS, Julia Grant and I found that they
were actually
better than typically developing controls at repeating the nonce term
- the controls
were muddled by any resemblances the nonce had with real words e.g. '"chalique"
ah that sounds like "chalet"'.  We didn't have a single instance of
this with the clinical
population.  But recalling the nonce term and adding morphological
marking are of
course different things entirely.  The computational demands may well be a very
important factor, as Brian points out.
Annette

At 12:26 pm +0800 15/5/01, Brian MacWhinney wrote:
>Dear Info-CHILDES,
>
>I would like to thank Jean Berko Gleason, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Michael
>Thomas, and Virginia Marchman for extremely helpful replies to my questions
>and observations regarding the form of the nonce-word "wugs" task.
>
>As Jean and Virginia note, none of the versions of the task should be viewed
>as "fill in the blank".  Instead better names would be:
>1. finish my utterance (this is the original version from Berko 1958)
>2. finish the word I started (this is the version introduced by Tyler and
>Marslen-Wilson and used by Moore et al.)
>3. answer the question (this is the form used by MacWhinney, 1975, 1978).
>These forms of the task then further vary by the nature of the visual or
>contextual support given to the child. This support can involve pictures,
>objects, or enactments. As I suggested, using objects that the child can
>hold and actual enactments can allow the task to measure productivity with
>nonce words down to 1;8, whereas the other methods can be used with children
>from 3;6, as Virginia notes.
>
>There is another wrinkle to my earlier implementation of the task that I
>failed to mention.  This is primarily important for children under about
>2;6, but could also be important for children with SLI or WS.  This is the
>fact that, if one uses real objects and demonstrates their action a couple
>of times, then it is easier to get the child to learn the name of the
>action, at least in fast-mapping terms.  If the child has fast-mapped the
>noun or verb, then the formation of the plural or past tense is more likely
>to go through the normal productive system (whatever that might be).
>However, if fast-mapping has not been fully achieved and the child is trying
>to dredge up the word under load, then zero-marking is likely to result.
>
>In regard to picture supports, I'm not quite sure how they work in the cases
>of nonce verbs.  It would seem easy enough to draw good pictures for things
>like "running" and "swimming", but how do you draw "miffing" and "tiving" or
>the various novel actions that we see in recent studies by Brooks, Tomasello
>and others.  I don't remember seeing displays of the pictures that were used
>in any of these studies with "finish my utterance" tasks for nonce verbs.
>However, verbs have become increasingly important in recent argumentation
>about the specificity of grammatical impairment in language disorders.
>
>I should add that my ability to get nonce forms from age 1;8 using the
>"answer the question" procedure was for nouns in Hungarian.  Also it worked
>at about 2;3 for nouns in German.  For verbs in Hungarian, the "answer the
>question" procedure didn't work until about 2;3 in Hungarian.  So, verbs are
>harder than nouns, as we know.
>
>When reading the interesting article from Michael, Annette, and colleagues,
>I did of course notice the inclusion of a second task and the marked
>difference that the second task had on decreasing errors of omission from
>26% to 5% in the WS group, as well as the youngest control group.  In fact,
>it was this comparison that triggered me to raise the issue on info-childes
>in the first place.
>
>It was crucial in these studies to continue to use the "finish my utterance"
>form of the task, since this has been used by Clahsen and Almazan (1998) and
>van der Lely and Ullman (2001).  By using the "finish the word I started"
>technique of Tyler and Marslen-Wilson, Thomas et al. were indeed able to
>reduce memory load and get a fuller picture of morphological productivity.
>
>Michael's further comment was that "currently we are not clear whether the
>higher level of zero marking errors in the 'fill in the missing word' task
>was due to that task's great memory load or due to a context that
>constrained a past tense response less strongly than in the 'finish the word
>I started' procedure.  I think that is exactly the right question to be
>asking.
>
>Thanks for a useful discussion of these issues and happy wugging.
>
>--Brian MacWhinney

--
________________________________________________________________
Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith,
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
Institute of Child Health,
30 Guilford Street,
London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
tel: 0207 905 2754
fax: 0207 242 7717
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm
________________________________________________________________