Is the provision of stories influenced by the semantic domain of the lexical items ?

• During post test 3 the children provided significantly more stories for the target
words describing artifacts than for the words describing animals. The same pattern
was found for the Lexical contrast and Definition groups.

To what extent does the child’s prior lexical knowledge (Comprehension and Naming)
influence the provision of stories T^,

Baseline Comprehension Vocabulary

• Children with high level baseline comprehension vocabulary provided significantly
more stories than children with low level baseline comprehension vocabulary across
testing. Significant differences were found during post test 3. Separate analysis for
each group demonstrated the same pattern. Significant differences were found for the
Definition group during post test 1.

Baseline Naming Vocabulary

•      Children with high level of baseline naming vocabulary provided significantly more

stories than children with low level baseline naming vocabulary during post test 2 and
post test 3. Separate analysis for each group revealed the same pattern. However, the
differences were not significant

Analysis of the stories

• Children in their stories mentioned different properties of the target word. These
were descriptive, contextual, functional and semantic.

“Descriptive properties '

Is there a differential impact of the type of exposure to new lexical items that the children
receive to the provision of descriptive properties?

• No significant differences were found during post tests 1 and 3. During post test 2,
the Definition group provided significantly more “descriptive” properties than the
Ostensive definition and Lexical contrast groups.

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