Jean Berko Gleason

Jean Berko Gleason (born December 18, 1931) is an American researcher; she studies how children learn language. She is considered the founder of "experimental developmental psycholinguistics," doing experiments to understand how children figure out how language works and how to use it.

 Early life 
Gleason was born on December 19, 1931 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her older brother had cerebral palsy. Other people had trouble understanding him when he talked. Her brother’s condition gave her an interest in language.

Gleason started her career with studying many languages, but then gained an interest in psycholinguistics. She went to college at Radcliffe. She studied linguistics. Gleason completed a linguistics Master's Degree, also at Radcliffe. She has a ph.D in linguistics and social psychology at Harvard.  

 Career 
Gleason studied how children learn language. She created the Wug Test in 1958. The Wug helps understand how young children understand and learn languages. She developed cards with pictures of imaginary objects and activities. For example, she shows a picture of one imaginary animal and says: "This is a wug." She then shows children a picture with two of the same imaginary animal and asks: "These are two....?" and listens to how children complete the sentence. Have they learned that we say: "one wug, two wugs"? 

Gleason was a professor at Boston University.
 References 

Category:1931 births
Category:Living people
Category:American linguists
Category:American psychologists
Category:Boston University faculty
Category:Pages created with the Article Wizard from 2024