• Children were tested on their comprehension of passive sentences after training them to act out active sentences using toy dolls.

• Test sentences:

The boy was bumped by the dog.

The boy was pushed off by the girl.

The turtle was pushed by the dog.

• Children "passed" this pre-test if they correctly acted out 2 of the 3 sentences.

• Results:

Age Pass Fail

3,3-3,5 6 7

3,6-3,8 13 5

3,9-3,11 3 9

4,0-4,2 8 4

4,3-4,5 10 2

• Conclusion--

Just before the age of 4, children acquire a parsing strategy:

Any noun-verb-noun sequence corresponds to an actor-action-object sequence.