Dept. of Psychology

Kent State University

Kent, OH 44242

216-672-2059

wmerrima@kent.edu

Degrees

Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Institute of Child Development, Child Psychology, 1984.

B.S., Georgetown University, Psychology and Philosophy, 1979.

Professor, Psychology, Kent State University, 1997-present.

Associate Professor, Psychology, Kent State University, 1990-1997.

Assistant Professor, Psychology, Kent State University, 1985-1990.

General interest: Cognitive development in early childhood.

Specific interests: Nature of the representations and processes involved in the acquisition and use of basic concepts and word meanings; Causes and consequences of developing a metacognitive awareness of word novelty (i.e., of knowing whether or not you know what a particular word means).

Merriman, W. E. (in press). Competition, attention, and young children's lexical processing. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), The emergence of language. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Merriman, W. E. (1998). CALLED: A model of early word learning. In R. Vasta (Ed.) Annals of Child Development (Vol. 13) (pp. 67-112). London, Eng: Jessica Kingsley.

Evey, J. A., & Merriman, W. E. (1998). The prevalence and the weakness of an early name mapping preference. Journal of Child Language, 25, 121-147.

Merriman, W. E., & Stevenson, C. M. (1997). Restricting a familiar name in response to learning a new one: Evidence for the mutual exclusivity bias in young two-year-olds. Child Development, 68, 349-366.

Merriman, W. E., Evey-Burkey, J. A., Marazita, J. M., & Jarvis, L. H. (1996). Young two-year-olds' tendency to map novel verbs onto novel actions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 63, 466-498.

Merriman, W. E., Marazita, J. M., Jarvis, L. H., Evey-Burkey, J. A., & Biggins, M. (1995). What can be learned from something's not being named. Child Development, 66, 1890-1908.

Merriman, W. E., & Marazita, J. M. (1995). The effect of hearing similar-sounding words on two-year-olds' disambiguation of novel noun reference. Developmental Psychology, 31, 973-984.

Jarvis, L. H., Danks, J. H., & Merriman, W. E. (1995). The effects of bilingualism on cognitive ability: A test of the level of bilingualism hypothesis. Applied Psycholinguistics, 16, 293-308.

Merriman, W. E., Jarvis, L. H., & Marazita, J. M. (1995). How shall a deceptive thing be called? Journal of Child Language, 22, 129-149.

Merriman, W. E., Marazita, J., & Jarvis, L. (1995). Children's disposition to map new words onto new referents. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 147-184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Merriman, W. E., & Tomasello, M. (1995). Verbs are words too: An introduction to the volume. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 1-20). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Tomasello, M., & Merriman, W. E. (Eds.). (1995). Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Merriman, W. E., & Kutlesic, V. (1993). Bilingual and monolingual children's use of two lexical acquisition heuristics. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 229-249.

Merriman, W. E., Marazita, J., & Jarvis, L. (1993). Four-year-olds' disambiguation of action and object word reference. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 412-430.

Merriman, W. E., Scott, P., & Marazita, J. (1993). An appearance-function shift in children's object naming. Journal of Child Language, 20, 101-118.

Merriman, W. E. (1991). The mutual exclusivity bias in children's word learning: A reply to Woodward and Markman. Developmental Review, 11, 164-191.

Merriman, W. E. (1991). What a child expects a word to mean. Review of Ellen Markman's Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Applied Psycholinguistics, 12, 385-392.

Merriman, W. E., & Schuster, J. M. (1991). Young children's disambiguation of object name reference. Child Development, 62, 1288-1301.

Merriman, W. E., Schuster, J. M., & Hager, L. B. (1991). Are names ever mapped onto preexisting categories? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 120, 288-300.