students could produce any correct associations to a word); and semantic depth (i.e.,
whether they could produce a synonym or correct explanation). Curtis found that low-
ability students not only knew fewer of the tested words and had less practice knowledge
of the words they knew, they were also able to produce correct explanations for only
about half the words they had correct on the multiple choice test. Broader knowledge of
words is seen on tasks assessing antonyms, synonyms, hyponyms, semantic attributes.
Antonyms require the student either to use learned word associations (e.g., hot-cold) or
to analyse the characteristics of the stimulus and to choose which characteristic is the
critical one to oppose. Jorgensen et. al. (1981) suggest that failure to produce antonyms
may reflect (a) inability to determine the steps necessary for antonymous responses, (b)
difficulty in focusing on the critical semantic dimension, (c ) vocabulary that does not
include an opposite lexical item for each stimulus, (d) inability to retrieve the opposite
term, or (e) difficulty in understanding the meaning of the stimulus.
A synonym task can also be performed with learned responses (purse=handbag) or by
completing the analysis steps to find sufficient similarities of attributes. A related task is
that of similarities or differences, where the student is asked to choose which items are
either similar or different among three or four items and then may be asked to give a
reason for their choice. Like the antonym or synonym tasks, the student must have
available the appropriate semantic categories, knowledge of membership attributes, and
ability to compare∕contrast the items by their attributes.
The hyponym is another task that assess whether the child has some knowledge of the
domain to which the new word belongs (e.g, does the child knows that beige is a colour
word ?) and can make proper contrasts within the domain. In Carey and Bartlett’s (1978)
hyponym task, children were asked if various words were colours. Questions were of the
following type: “Is purple a colour ?” “Is cold a colour ?” “Is noisy a colour ?” A child had
to answer all of the questions correctly in order to be credited with knowing that
chromium is a colour word. This task proved to be very difficult for the children.
Heibeck and Markman (1987) used also the hyponym measure by asking the children to
provide a proper contrast for the new word. For example, children might hear: “See this?
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