6.2 Limitations of experiment 1
The obtained results discussed on the previous section are limited in the following ways.
Pre-existing vocabulary knowledge and lexical acquisition
Firstly, the results about the role of children’s existing vocabulary knowledge still remain
inconclusive since children’s performance across tasks did not differ significantly by their
existing vocabulary knowledge. It is probable that the critical element taps into particular
lexical items and not on general vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, the role of existing
vocabulary knowledge needs to be further investigated in order to extend our understanding
for the role of the pre-existing vocabulary knowledge for word learning.
The above suggestion is in accordance with other studies (Carey and Bartlett 1978; Heibeck
and Markman 1987). Particularly, Carey and Bartlett (1978) found that the children’s partial
mappings of the novel word “chromium” were highly dependent on the child’s preexisting
colour lexicon and the name the child used for olive during pretests. Heibeck and Markman
(1987) also investigated whether prior lexical knowledge in a given domain predicted how
well children learned a new word from that domain. Significant correlations were found for
children learning colour words and for children learning texture words but not for children
learning shape words.
Therefore, in order to get a better understanding of the role of the children’s existing
vocabulary for word learning, another test needs to be employed which will measure
children’s prior lexical knowledge of other words belonging in the same semantic domain
as the target words.
Lexical acquisition can be seen as a process over time
The findings of Experiment 1 are limited in describing the lexical acquisition as a process
over time. Those findings demonstrated children’s word learning in a single assessment
(immediate post test). Children’s word learning was also investigated one week later
(delayed post test). Thus, the delayed post test of Experiment 1, had to do more with
remembering than with how children construct a full representation of the word’s meaning
over time. Therefore, it needs to be further investigated how children construct the