What is the Wug test used to measure?

• A. A test using invented words to measure productive morphology and rules.
• B. A vocabulary check with real words.
• C. A test of reading comprehension.
• D. A memory task for stored words.

Answer: (A)

Productive morphology and the ability to apply grammatical rules to new forms are being tested. The Wug test uses invented words to see if a child can generate correct inflected forms (like plural -s or past tense -ed) for words they’ve never heard before, showing knowledge of how the rules work rather than simply recalling real words. For example, after seeing a picture of one wug and then two wugs, the child should supply the correct plural form, not rely on a stored word. This demonstrates whether the child can generalize rules to novel items. It’s not a vocabulary check with real words, a reading comprehension task, or a memory task for stored words.