Post-hoc analysis of children’s responses in the Lexical contrast condition revealed that
during the immediate post test the 6 year-olds performed significantly better than the 5-
(Mann-Whitney: Z=2.1, p<.05) and the 4 year-olds (Mann-Whitney: Z=2.6, p<.005). During
the delayed post test the 6 year- olds performed significantly better than the 4 year-olds
(Mann-Whitney: Z=2.4, p<.05).
To what extent does children’s performance on the analogy task differ by linguistic
condition?
If all children in each linguistic condition were correct on the two target words, the maximum
total score would be 96 for each linguistic condition in each post test. Figure 5.14 below
illustrates children’s performance on the analogy task by linguistic condition in the
immediate and the delayed post test.
Figure 5.14 Total number of correct responses in the analogy task by linguistic
condition for both post tests
J__] Immediateposttest
f~∣ Delayedposttest
As the figure above shows children in the Analogy condition performed better on the
analogy task than children in the other conditions for both post tests. The differences were
significant during the immediate (Kruskal-Wallis: 1 Way ANOVA: X2= 59.8, df=3, p<.0000)
and the delayed post test (Kruskall-Wallis, 1 Way ANOVA: X2= 41.3, df=3, p<.0000). Post
hoc analysis revealed that children in the Analogy condition performed significantly better
than children in the Inference, (immediate: Mann-Whitney: Z=5.6, p<.0000; delayed: Mann-
Whitney: Z=5.03, p<.0000), Definition (immediate. Mann-Whitney: Z=5.7, p<.0000;
delayed: Mann-Whitney: Z=4.7, p<.0000) and Lexical contrast condition (immediate: Mann-
Whitney: Z=5.8, p<.0000; delayed: Mann-Whitney: Z= 4.5, p<.0000).