within each linguistic condition. Significant differences were found for the Lexical
contrast condition during the delayed post test.
Error analysis
• Children’s given responses to the inference task mainly focused on the “action to
the object" and ‘functional properties" of the target item. Responses focusing on the
above categories were the more frequent for both post tests.
• The same pattern was found within each age group and linguistic condition. The
analysis by age revealed that the responses of the 4 year-olds remained the same
during the delayed post test. The 5 year-olds “action on the object" responses
decreased during the delayed post test, while the “functional properties" responses
increased during the delayed post test. The increase of the “functional properties"
responses was significant. The same pattern was evident for the 6 year-olds; they also
provided more responses focusing on the “action to the object" and on the
“functionalproperties" than the 4- and 5 year-olds.
Concluding remarks for the inference task
► The analysis of the inference task illustrated that the 6 year-olds performed better than
the 4- and 5 year-olds. The same pattern was evident within each linguistic condition.
Differences by linguistic condition were also found. Children in the Inference
condition performed better than the children in the other conditions for both post
tests. The same pattern was found within each age group. It was also found that the
children performed better in the delayed than the immediate post test. That pattern
was evident within each age group and linguistic condition. A trend was also found
for the children with high existing vocabulary to perform better than the children with
low existing vocabulary. Furthermore, children with high phonological memory
performed better than children with low phonological memory. The previous findings
were also evident within each age group and linguistic condition.