The purpose of this study was to determine whether differences exist between the vectors of the means of inflectional endings, plural and total scores, supplied by children of the age groups three, four, five and six enrolled in selected day care centers, kindergartens and first grades in Muncie, Indiana.An additional purpose of the study was to determine whether inflectional endings were acquired gradually between ages three and six or whether the inflectional endings were acquired at a specific age between the years three and six.A total of 120 children enrolled in selected ay care centers, kindergartens and first grades located in Muncie, Indiana, were randomly selected to represent four different age groups: 3-year-olds, 4-yearolds, 5--year-olds and 6-year--olds. Each age group was represented by 30 children, 15 boys and 15 girls.The Wug Test, which measures the inflectional endings supplied by children, was the ins-crument selected for the study. The Wug Test was developed by Berko and adapted by Stickle. The adapted form of the Wug Test was used for the purposes of this study. A pilot study was conducted to determine the reliability coefficient of the adapted form of the Wug Test when administered to 30 three-year-olds. Using the Kuder Richardson Reliability #20 formula, the reliability coefficient for 16 items of the test was .691,15 for three-year-olds. There was no variance reported on item 16 of the test; however, all 17 items were used since older children were also tested. The adapted form of the Wug Test was individually administered to 120 children in a quiet room away from the general noise and possible intrusions at each site.One overall null hypothesis was tested at the .05 level of statistical significance. The hypothesis stated that no statistically significant difference exists between the vectors of the means of inflectional endings, plural and total scores, supplied by children of three, four, five and six enrolled in selected ay care centers, kindergartens and first grades in Muncie, Indiana. Statistically significant difference was found; therefore, further comparisons were made utilizing Tukey's Honestly Significant Different procedures to determine the point at which statistically significant differences existed between age groups on plural sub-scores and total scores. Statistically significant differences were found when }year-olds were compared to 6-year-olds and when 4-year-olds were compared to 6-year-olds on plural sub-scores; when 3-year-olds were compared to 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds on total scores. Children who were 4-years old differed statistically on total scores when compared to children who were 5 or 6 years old.Conclusions drawn from the findings were: children as young as 3 years old can inflect nonsense words; children seem to acquire gradually the ability to supply inflectional endings between the ages 3 and 6; all inflectional endings are not acquired by age 6; significant differences exist between the number of inflectional endings supplied by children 3 through 6 years of age on both plural sub-scores and total scores; and the general superiority that is often reported concerning the language development of girls over the language development of boys was not found when testing inflectional endings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/179526 |
| Date | 03 June 2011 |
| Creators | Perry, Caroline G. |
| Contributors | Hochstetler, Ruth J. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | vi, 82 leaves : graphs ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-us--- |
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