5.4.2.2.4 Analogy task
Scoring criteria for the analogy task
In each trial the child had to answer two questions for the puppet.. To be correct, the response
had to be an appropriate answer to the analogy task, while incorrect was scored if the child
provided an inappropriate answer. All the responses that referred to another item from the
same semantic category as similar to the target word were counted as appropriate answers to
the analogy task (“Do you know anything else like this (the target item) ?”). Each child could
get a score from 0-2.
Analysis
To what extent does children ,s performance on the analogy task differ by age ?
If all children from each age group were correct on the two target words, the maximum total
score would be 128 for each age group in each post test. Figure 5.13 demonstrates children’s
performance on the analogy task by age for both post tests.
Figure 5.13 Total number of correct responses in the analogy task by age for both post
tests
і J Delayedposttest
Significant correlations were found between children’s age and their performance on the
analogy task for both post tests. The same pattern was evident when children’s vocabulary
and memory scores were controlled for (see Table in Appendix 5.20 for correlations).
As the figure above illustrates, the older children performed better than the younger ones. In
order to investigate whether the differences were significant, two one Way ANOVAs were
carried out for each post test. Age was the independent factor and score on the analogy task