post test (Mann-Whitney: Z=2.9, p<.005) (see Table in Appendix 5.10. The same pattern was
evident within each age group. Significant differences were found for the 6 years-old both
for the immediate (Mann-Whitney: Z=2.6, p<.05) and the delayed post test (Mann-Whitney:
Z=2.9, p<.005). Whether the same pattern was evident within each linguistic condition was
also investigated. The same pattern was found for the Analogy condition during the
immediate (Mann-Whitney: Z=2.01, p<.05) and the delayed post tests (Mann-Whitney:
Z=2.2, p<.05). The same pattern was found for the Contrast condition for both post tests. A
trend for significance was found during the immediate post test, while signifies : ɪL differences
were found during the delayed post test (Mann-Whitney: Z=3.2, p<.005).
Error analysis
Different sentences were provided by the children in the sentence generation task. An Error
analysis was carried out to identify the different types of properties that children focused on
in their made up sentences. The different properties are presented in Table 5.17
Table 5.17 Types of properties identified in children’s sentences
|
Properties____________________ |
______________Description__________________________________ |
|
Don’t know |
If they did not provide any answer |
|
Idiosyncratic properties |
Sentences that focused on idiosyncratic relations |
|
Perceptual properties |
If the sentences focused on perceptual properties, |
|
Functional properties |
Eg. “ the boy plays music with it, for abez, or “the |
|
Semantic properties |
When they categorized the items by using a basic |
The distribution of children’s responses across testing is presented in Table 5.18 for both
target words, since children’s responses on the sentence generation task did not differ by
target item.