Department of psychology

William E. Merriman, Ph.D.

Education: Ph.D., University of Minnesota (1984)

Research Interests

My research focuses on cognitive development in early childhood, with an emphasis on word learning and metacognition. Current lines of research concern: the causes and the effects of preschoolers' increasing ability to recognize gaps in their own linguistic knowledge; reasons for toddlers' greater difficulty retrieving change-of-state verbs than manner-of-movement verbs; and how children correct their interpretation of words in response to implicit and explicit forms of negative evidence.

Courses Frequently Taught

• Cognitive Development (undergraduate)
• Developmental Psychology (graduate)
• Cognitive Development (graduate)

Recent Publications

Merriman, W. E., & Lipko, A. R. (in press). A dual criterion account of the development of linguistic judgment in early childhood. Journal of Memory and Language.
 
Merriman, W. E., Evey, J. A.  (2005). The nominal passover effect depends on addressee age, speaker goal, and object similarity. Child Development, 76, 1185-1201.
 
Marazita, J. M., & Merriman, W. E. (2004). Young children’s judgment of whether they know names for objects: The metalinguistic ability it reflects and the processes it involves. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 458-472.

Jarvis, L. H., Merriman, W. E., Barnett, M., Hanba, J., & Van Haitsma, K. S. (2004). Input that contradicts young children’s word-mapping strategy affects their phonological and semantic interpretation of other words.  Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 392-406.