Chapter 7:

EXPERIMENT 2

7.1 Introduction

The chapter begins by presenting the aims and the research questions of Experiment 2. Then,
the methods and the results OfExperiment 2 are presented. The Results sections begins with
the baseline measures and each one of the post test measures and concludes with between and
across tests comparisons (see the organisation of the results at the Results section).

7.2 Aims and Research questions of Experiment 2

Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the effects of child based factors (prior vocabulary
knowledge), the nature of the lexicon (semantic domain and prior knowledge of the target
words) and the nature of the input (repetitive exposure to different linguistic contexts) for the
acquisition of new words. The main research questions of Experiment 2 (as already been
presented in the previous chapter) are the following:

1. Is there a differential impact of the type of exposure to new lexical items that the children
receive ?

2. Does children’s performance improve with increased exposure to the lexical items ?

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