What might a child who over-generalizes vocabulary say when fitting a new situation?

A child who over-generalizes vocabulary is likely applying a consistent grammatical rule across different contexts, even when it's not appropriate. In this case, saying "Eated" demonstrates the common pattern of applying past tense irregularities.

When children learn language, they often generalize rules they have heard, such as adding "ed" to form the past tense of verbs. However, some verbs are irregular, and the correct past tense of the verb "eat" is actually "ate." By saying "eated," the child illustrates the tendency to overuse regular conjugation patterns to verbs that do not follow them. This illustrates a developmental stage in language acquisition where the child is experimenting with language rules as they learn.

The other options represent different forms of the verb that wouldn’t indicate an over-generalization of verb tense in the same way. "Eaten," "eater," and "eating" are all grammatically correct forms but do not reflect the over-generalization of applying a past tense rule incorrectly as "eated" does.