of the test was to measure these immediate memory skills. The form for the phonological
memory test used is given in the Appendix 5.4.

Post test measurements

The children from each age group were randomly allocated to one of four groups (Inference
group, Analogy group, Lexical contrast group, Definition group). The intervention took place
over a period of one week. Children were assigned to Immediate assessment after each
intervention and delayed assessment one week later without any further intervention.
Children’s word knowledge was assessed through seven tasks. Assessing took place twice.
Once after the exposure (Immediate post- test) and one week later (Delayed post-test). The
order of the tasks presentation was the same for all the children across sessions, so that any
order effects would be balanced across children. The measurements used are presented in the
Table 5.3, while the record form for the post-test measurements is presented in Appendix 5.5.

Table 5.3 Post test measurements of Experiment 1

Naming task was used to test children’s phonological knowledge of the target words as well
as to describe the different responses that children gave to the naming task through an error
analysis. Inference task was used to assess children’s understanding of the target words’
meaning. Analogy task was designed to investigate to what extent children were able to relate
the target words with others from the same semantic category in terms of similarity. The
contrast task was used to identify to what extent children were able to relate the target words
with others from the same semantic category (in terms of contrast), as well as to explore all
the other different sorts of relations they would provide. The aim of the multiple choice task

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