NVESTIGATING LEXICAL ACQUISITION PATTERNS: CONTEXT AND COGNITION

2. To what extent does children’s word learning differ by the linguistic condition in which
the novel word is presented ?

3. To what extent do children retain the words’ meaning over time ?

4. To what extent does word learning differ by the children’s existing vocabulary ?

5. To what extent does word learning differ by the children’s phonological working
memory?

However, before carrying out Experiment 1 a pilot study was carried out first to investigate:
(a) to what extent the specific linguistic contexts designed particularly for Experiment 1 were
appropriate for the children and (b) to test the appropriateness of the target lexical items.

4.3.1 The Pilot study

4.3.2 Method

4.3.2.1 Participants

Fifty eight nursery and reception class children (29 boys and 29 girls) participated in the
study. Twenty five had a mean age 4.6 (range 4-5 years) and thirty four of them had a mean
age 5.6 (range 5-6 years). The participants were selected from two, State supported, middle
class, Primary schools. The children were randomly assigned to four conditions with the
constraint that the conditions be roughly equated for age and sex.

4.3.2.2 Design

The children were divided into eight groups which were balanced for age and sex. The first
four groups had a mean age of 4.6 years and the other four groups had a mean age of 5.6
years. The conditions that were applied to the first four groups were exactly the same for the
other four.

Group I received four stories (one story per lexical item) that included two polysyllabic and
two bi syllabic nouns which were replaced by non-words (tangophon, tramacle, feber,
sackets). The new lexical items were presented through an Inference condition. Group II
received four stories where the same non-words were presented through a Definition
condition. Group III received four stories where the non-words were presented through an

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