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Jean Berko Gleason is a Professor Emerita in the psychology department at the Boston University. She is a psycholinguist who has made principal additions to the comprehension of language acquisition in children, aphasia, gender differences in language development, and parent-child interactions. She is widely popular for formulating the Wug Test, by which she displayed that even young children possess implicit knowledge of linguistic morphology; this is still in use today.

Biography

Jean Berko was born to Hungarian immigrant parents in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1949 and subsequently earned a B.A. in history and literature, a M.A. in linguistics, and a combined Ph.D. in linguistics and psychology, all from Radcliffe. In graduate school she was advised by Roger Brown, a founder in the field of child language acquisition. In January 1959 she married Harvard mathematician Andrew Gleason, and together they had three daughters.

Gleason has spent a majority of her professional career at Boston University, where she served as Psychology department chair and director of the Graduate Program in Human Development; Lise Menn and Harold Goodglass were among her collaborators there.

She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Stanford University, and at the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Psychological Association, and was 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 was its president from 1996 to 1999. She has also served on the editorial boards of numerous academic and professional journals, and was associate editor of Language. She is editor and co-editor of two widely used textbooks, The Development of Language (1985) and Psycholinguistics (1993).

Gleason was one of the profiled in Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Forty Women Whose Ideas Shape the Modern World (1996).

A Festschrift in her honor, Methods for Studying Language Production, was published in 2000.

Research

Child's Learning of English Morphology

Gleason’s earliest research studied the child’s learning of English morphology. In her well known study, Gleason tested for knowledge of morphological rules with the help of nonsense materials. If a speaker can, for example, can give an appropriate plural form "wugs" to a noun that is made up, like "wug", then that person has learned the basics of how the English language makes plurals. Using a nonsense word is the key to exploring whether a child knows the morphological patterns of the language or languages he or she is learning. Berko Gleason showed young children simple pictures of imaginary creatures and activities, and instructed to complete statements about them like this: Here is a wug. Now in this picture, there are two of them. There are two ________. A child who knows that the plural of witch is witches might have memorized the plural form, but if the child states that the plural of wug is wugs, this is evidence that she has unconscious knowledge of a morphological rule - the basic rule for making plurals - that any descriptive linguist would demonstrate in a grammar of English.

Gleason discovered that young children were capable of connecting suitable endings to nonsense words that were not previously learned, in order to generate plurals, past tense forms, and other general morphological structures. She also found that they could produce plurals and other forms on real words before they could add endings to nonsense. So children start by memorizing examples of word with endings (like 'rugs' and 'witches'), and then go on to extract rules and patterns from these examples that they can generalize to novel words.

Gleason’s conclusions are viewed as essential to the comprehension of when and how children reach major landmarks in regards to language. Her work “The Child’s Learning of English Morphology” serves as fundamental to compilations of cognitive psychology and language development readings, and alternatives of the Wug Test remain in use around the world for the studies of children’s language acquisition.

Parent-Child Interactions

Other early research of Gleason’s involved the differences existing between the ways mothers and fathers speak to their children. Gleason explored this concept in her studies outlined in her paper Fathers and Other Strangers: Men’s Speech to Young Children. The major data analyzed in her study was produced by two female and two male daycare teachers at a large university, and by three mothers and three fathers, with their children at home and mainly during dinner time. It was found that at home, mothers spoke less complexly to their children and generated lengthier and more complex pronouncements toward their eldest child. Fathers were found to speak a good deal more of commands to the children than mothers did, along with more threats and teasing by means of name-calling. The fathers’ language also defined the role that they play in their families, like in the example in which a father is playing a game with his son, but if the son needs his diaper changed, the father may direct him to the mother for her to change it.

In a fair contrast, male and female daycare teachers generated language with that was analogous both quantitatively and qualitatively, with both focusing on dialogue based in the present and on the urgent needs of the children. Differences were the fact that the male teachers called the children by their name on average more often than the female teachers, and also that the male teachers produced more imperatives than the females.

Acquisition of Routines in Children

Gleason’s research eventually extended into the study of the acquisition of routines in children. One popular study was depicted in Gleason and Weintraub’s paper The Acquisition of Routines in Child Language. The study analyzed the performance of the eminently forced Halloween Trick or treat routine in one hundred and fifteen children from ages two to sixteen years. Alterations in ability and the function of parental contribution were analyzed concerning cognitive and social components. It was discovered that, in contrast to much of the rest of language, with the acquisition of routines, the major interest of parents is to have their children achieve accurate performance, with little stress put on cognitive components. It was found that the parents at no time explain to their children the meanings of such routines as Bye bye or Trick or treat, because in the cases of routines, there is no concern with what an individual thinks as long as he performs at the correct time. Thus routine acquisition advances in much the conflicting direction from a majority of the rest of language.

Continuing her study of acquisition of routines in children, Gleason, along with Greif, analyzed children’s acquisition of the routines of hi, thanks, and goodbye in their paper Hi, Thanks, and Goodbye: More Routine Information. Participants of their study consisted of twenty-two children, eleven boys and eleven girls, and their parents. At the conclusion of a parent-child play period, an assistant came into the playroom with a present to evoke routines from the children. The study’s purpose was to analyze how parents communicate these routines to their children, and major questions proposed included "Are some routines more obligatory than others?" and "Do mothers and fathers provide different models of politeness behavior for their children?" Results of Gleason’s study depicted that children's instinctive construction of the three routines was low, and thank you was the rarest. However, parents strongly incited their children to generate routines, and typically, the children obeyed. In addition, parents were more likely to prompt the thank you routine in contrast with hi and goodbye. Also, parents practiced the routines themselves, and it was discovered that mothers were more likely than fathers to speak thank you and goodbye to the assistant.

To delve even further into children’s routine acquisition is Gleason’s, along with Richard Ely’s, in depth study of apologies in children’s dialogue, analyzed in their paper I’m sorry I said that: apologies in young children’s discourse. Children’s apology term usage was analyzed in parent-child dialogue. Data was collected from nine children, five boys and four girls, between one and six years of age. Results of Gleason’s research showed that apologies appear later in children than other greater average politeness routines. Research showed that as children grew older, they cultivated a progressively refined expertise of this routine, which was shown in extent to which their apologies were a reply to indirect prompts and also in the way they increase their habits of elaboration. It was also discovered that parents and other adults serve an important part in entertaining the growing abilities of children by setting examples for them in regards to apologetic dialogue, achieved by encouraging their children to apologize and also by speaking specifically and purposefully about apologies.

With the help of Ely, MacGIbbon, and Zaretsky, Gleason also explored the discourse of parents and their children at the dinner table in her paper Attention to Language: Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table. The everyday language of parents, along with a smaller amount of young children, involves a remarkable portion of attention to language. The dinner table conversations of twenty-two middle class families, each possessing a child between two and five-and-a-half years old, were recorded. Conversation transcripts were then examined for the existence and activity of language-centered terms, including words like ask, tell, say, and speak. Over eleven percent of mothers’, seven percent of fathers’, and four percent of children’s vocalizations held a language-centered term. Uses that were metalinguistic (for example, accounting for and remarking on speech) surpassed uses that were pragmatic (for example, managing how and when speech appears). Mothers spoke about language more than fathers, and fathers spoke more about it than children. The mothers’ application of language-centered terms was positively related to children’s use of language-centered term, although this was not found true for fathers. The results imply that in the progress of routine social communications, parents supply children with conceivably significant information regarding language’s informative functions.

Foreign Language Studies

Gleason spent significant time dappling in studies related to foreign languages. In one such study with Harris and Aycicegi, explored the relation between taboo words and foreign languages, and explained such results in the paper Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. In the experiment Gleason psychophysiologically investigated the claims that second language speakers often make about finding greater comfortability in speaking taboo terms in their second language. Thirty-two Turkish-English bilinguals judged an array of stimuli for amiability in Turkish, their first language, and English, their second language, while the conductance of their skin was monitored with the help of fingertip electrodes. Results showed that participants displayed a larger amount of autonomic arousal to taboo words and childhood reprimands in their first language in contrast to their second language. This evidence supplies significant backing for the personal encounters of second language speakers regarding taboo words and speaking them in foreign languages.

Gleason, along with Pan, also wrote a paper entitled Maintaining Foreign Language Skills, which discusses the personal, cultural, and instructional factors involved with keeping up foreign language skills. Gleason shares that humans have the phenomenal ability to acquire language, but at the same time, they also possess the ability to lose it. Brain damage, strokes, and other physical impairments serve as the severe causes of language loss, but many individuals experience loss of language skills due to the absence of a linguistically fit social environment in which to put such skills into use, like when a speaker of a certain language relocates to a country where a different language is spoken, and consequently, that speaker will eventually lose his or her first language skills. Culture also factors in. More often than not, individuals speaking two or more different languages come into contact with one another, reasons ranging from emigration and interrelationships to alterations in political borders. The result of such contact is typically a progressive shift in usage from one language to the other.

Aphasia

Gleason has also conducted much research pertaining to aphasia. In people with aphasia, several aspects of language can be damaged, including basic morphology and syntax. Gleason and colleagues' individual case study of an man with Broca’s aphasia/agrammatism. Along with Goodglass, Bernholtz, and Hyde, Gleason conducted the experiment Some Linguistic Structures in the Speech of a Broca’s Aphasic For this study, the primary method conceived was the Story Completion Test, which was constructed to investigate the subject’s capacity for producing a variety of common English grammatical forms. This test was used simultaneously with free conversation, repetition, and an examination of inflectional morphology. The investigator introduced a little story for a pictured situation by saying a few sentences and then asked the aphasic person to conclude the story. The stories were designed so that a non-language-impaired person's response would use particular structures, for example the plural of a noun, the past tense of a verb, or a complete simple yes-no question (e.g. "Where are my shoes?").

Gleason, Goodglass, Berko, and Hyde concluded that the transition from verb to object was easier for this speaker than that from subject to verb. Also, auxiliary verbs and verb inflections were the parts of speech most likely to be omitted, and there was considerable variation among consecutive trials of the same item, although successive attempts usually came closer to what a normal speaker would have produced. The study concluded that the way this person spoke was not the product of a stable abnormal grammar, and could not be accounted for by assuming that he was simply leaving out words in order to minimize his effort in producing words; both of these were major matters of theoretical controversy at the time.

Select publications

• 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.

References

1. "Jean Berko Gleason, PhD Professor Emerita". Retrieved 28 January 2013.
2. Bonvillain, N. (1993). Language, culture, and communication: the meaning of messages. Prentice Hall.
3. Gleason, Jean Berko (2007). ). Cram101 textbook outlines to accompany: the development of language. Academic Internet Publishers.
4. Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Forty Women Whose Ideas Shape the Modern World. Manchester University Press. 1996. ISBN 978-0-7190-4773-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
5. Berko, Jean (1958). "The Child's Learning of English Morphology". Word: 150–177.
6. Gleason, Jean Berko (1975). "Fathers and Other Strangers: Men's speech to Young Children". 26th Annual Roundtable: 289–297.
7. Gleason, Jean Berko; Weintraub (1976). "The acquisition of routines in child language". Language in Society: 5, 129, 136.
8. Gleason, Jean Berko; Greif (1980). "Hi, Thanks, and Goodbye: More Routine Information". Language in Society: 9, 159–166.
9. Gleason, Jean Berko; Ely (2006). "I'm sorry I said that: apologies in young children's discourse". Journal of Child Language: 33, 599–620.
10. Gleason, Jean Berko (2001). "Attention to Language: Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table". Social Development. 10.3: 5, 129–136. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
11. Gleason, Jean Berko (2003). "Taboo Words and Reprimands Elicit Greater Autonomic Reactivity in a First than in a Second Language". Applied Pyscholinguistics: 1–22. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
12. Gleason, Jean Berko; Pan (1988). "Maintaining Foreign Language Skills". You CAN Take It with You: 1–22.
13. Gleason, Jean Berko (1972). "Some Linguistic Structures in the Speech of a Broca's Aphasic". Cortex: 191–212. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

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