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Overview
fis phenomenon
Quick Reference
A child's refusal to accept an adult's rendering of what the child has just said. The phenomenon was first reported in 1960 by the US psychologists Jean Berko (born 1931, later called Jean Berko Gleason) and Roger William Brown (1925–97) in an account of a child who called his plastic fish a fis but refused to accept this pronunciation from adults and was satisfied only when they called it a fish. This is often taken to illustrate that young children can hear more than they can say.
Subjects: Science and technology — Psychology
