Is the provision of contextual properties influenced by the semantic domain of the lexical
items?

Children provided more “contextual” properties for the words describing animals than for
those describing artifacts across testing. The differences were found to be significant for post
test 2. The same pattern was found for each group. The differences were significant for the
Lexical contrast group during post test 1 and the Definition group during post test 2.

Concluding remarks for the Definition task

► The above analysis of the Definition task indicates that the Definition group
performed better than the other groups and overall the children performed better over
time. The children tended to provide more definitions for the partially represented
than the unknown words as well as for the artifacts than the animals. Moreover, the
children with high comprehension and naming vocabulary provided more definitions
than the children with low comprehension and naming vocabulary.

► A qualitative analysis of the Definitions revealed that the children focused on
different properties in their definitions of the target words such as “descriptive ”,
“semantic”, “functional” and “contextual”. Analysis of each type of property revealed
that the Definition group always performed better than the other groups and that the
children from that group provided more “descriptive”, “semantic” and “functional”
properties over time than the children from the other groups. Furthermore, all the
children provided more “descriptive” properties for the partially represented than the
unknown words. They also provided more “descriptive” and “contextual” properties
for the words describing animals than artifacts, and more “semantic” properties for
the words describing artifacts than animals.

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