correlated with their performance on the naming task across testing. Furthermore, it was
found that children’s existing receptive vocabulary knowledge was correlated with
performance on the multiple choice task across testing but not with performance on the
naming task. Moreover, significant correlations were found between children’s performance
on the naming, analogy and contrast tasks during the Immediate post test. Nevertheless,
correlation does not mean causation. It would be very interesting to investigate, in a future
research, which predictors predict performance in which tasks using a regression analysis,
something that was not applicable in the present research because of the nature of the data.
The same pattern was found in Experiment 2. Particularly, it was demonstrated that
comprehension and production were correlated significantly with one another. It was also
shown that the prior lexical knowledge (receptive and expressive) correlated with
performance on the multiple choice and naming task across testing. Furthermore, during
post test 1, performance on the naming task was correlated with performance on the “world
knowledge questions” task; during post test 2, performance on the naming task was correlated
with performance on the contrast, definition, categorisation questions and story generation
tasks. Lastly, during post test 3, children’s performance on the naming task was significantly
correlated with their performance on all the other tasks.
The above patterns indicate that it is not that easy to claim with certainty that comprehension
and production are two different processes, for two reasons. First, significant relations
between performance on the comprehension and production tasks were found. Secondly,
significant correlations between children’s existing vocabulary knowledge and performance
on the multiple choice and naming task were also identified. The last finding could probably
imply that comprehension and production may not require such different prerequisites.
A final suggestion could be that comprehension and production may be distinct to a certain
level (performance level) and interrelated at the same time. This suggestion could be related
with Donaldson and Laing’s (1993) claim who suggest that “a better understanding of
language development entails establishing how production and comprehension inter-relate”
(p.177).