Fis Phenomenon - Berko & Brown (1960)

• The Fis Phenomenon demonstrates that perception of phonemes occurs earlier than the ability of the child to produce those phonemes.
• During a research project, a child referred to his inflatable fish as /fis/. When adult asked him, "Is this your fis?" he rejected the statement.
• Although the child could nor produce the phoneme /sh/, he could perceive it as being different from the phoneme /s/.
• The Fis Phenomenon suggests that phonological processing allows for phoneme recognition on hearing, but when the actual sound produced by the child doesn't match the target, this can be overridden.