Lexical contrast task: Two pictures of the target words were used.

Definition task: No materials were used.

Sentence generation task:

Two pictures of the target words as well as four other pictures for prompting were used. For
each target word, one of the other pictures was taxonomically related with the target word
and the other was thematically related with the target word.

5.3.4 Procedure

The present section is divided into three parts. The first part presents information about the
general testing procedure. In the second part the pre-test and intervention procedures for the
different groups (linguistic conditions) are described. In the third section, the procedures for
the post-test measures are presented.

5.3.4.1 General testing procedure

The experimenter was introduced to the class by the class teacher. Children were tested
individually in a room separate from the classroom. At the start of the testing session, a few
minutes were spent in a general conversation with the child, to put him or her at ease. All the
tasks were introduced to the child as “games”. The child was assured that this was not a test,
and there were no right or wrong answers.

Children were tested in three separate sessions. Sessions were conducted one week apart.
Each session lasted from 15 to 20 minutes. In the first session three pre-test measurements
took place. The order of the measures was kept the same for all the children. The BPVS
(British Picture Vocabulary scale) test was first, then the target vocabulary pre-test (screening
test). The BPVS test was always given before the target vocabulary pretest, because the
BPVS is designed to start with words that the child knows, thus familiarising the children
with the procedure and keeping them relaxed. Then they were given the target and control
vocabulary pretest. Last, the children were tested on the non-word repetition test.

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