"Goed" and "foots" at child care

Introduction: Young children sometimes say words such as "goed" instead of "went" or "foots" instead of "feet", adding a regular ending to a word that doesn't take it. Researchers recorded young children's everyday speech to see how often these errors happen and whether children use forms that adults around them say.

Participants: Twenty-six children aged 3 years to 3 years 6 months (14 girls and 12 boys) who attended three child-care centers in Dublin, Ireland. All spoke English as their only language at home. Most families lived in middle-income neighborhoods.

Method: A university ethics committee approved the study. Parents gave written informed consent, and the child-care centers agreed to take part. Over four weeks, each child was observed for a total of 6 hours during ordinary free play and snack times. Each child wore a small audio recorder clipped to a vest, which children at the centers were used to wearing. A researcher sat quietly at the side of the room, taking notes about what the children were doing, and did not talk with them or set up any activities. Recordings were typed up using code numbers instead of names, and the audio was then deleted.

Two researchers, working separately, coded every past-tense verb and plural noun each child said. An overgeneralization error was a regular ending (-ed or -s) added to a word that has an irregular form, such as "runned", "goed", "mouses" or "foots". The two coders agreed on 96% of words. The researchers also coded 30 hours of speech by the adults at the centers.

Results and Discussion: The table shows how many overgeneralization errors each child made in their 6 hours of recorded speech. Of the 24 children who made at least one error, 21 also used the correct irregular form of the same word at another time during the recordings (for example, saying both "went" and "goed"). No overgeneralization errors were found in the 30 hours of adult speech.