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?
5.3 Methods
5.3.1 Participants
Two hundred and thirty children from three primary schools in London were screened for the
Experiment. They had to have English as their first language. At the end, one hundred and
ninety two English-speaking children were selected to take part in Experiment 11. Ninety six
of them were boys and ninety six were girls. Table 5.1 shows the range of age and the mean
ages (in years and months) of the sample by group of intervention.
Table 5.1 Characteristics of the sample (N=192) by group
|
Groups________ |
_________Age_________ |
Boys |
Girls |
Total________ | |
|
Range____ |
Mean | ||||
|
Inference |
3;6-4;6 |
4.00 |
8 |
8 |
~І6 |
|
4;6-5;6 |
5.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 | |
|
5;6-6;6 |
6.00 |
8 |
8 |
16____________ | |
|
Analogy |
3;6-4;6 |
4.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 |
|
4;6-5;6 |
5.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 | |
|
5;6-6;6______ |
6.00 |
8 |
8 |
16___________ | |
|
Lex. Contrast |
3;6-4;6 |
4.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 |
|
4;6-5;6 |
5.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 | |
|
5;6-6;6______ |
6.00 |
8 |
8 |
16____________ | |
|
Definition |
3;6-4;6 |
4.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 |
|
4;6-5;6 |
5.00 |
8 |
8 |
16 | |
|
5;6-6;6______ |
6.00 |
8 |
8 |
16___________ | |
5.3.2 Design
The design OfExperiment 1 is presented in Table 5.2. Experiment 1 had a mixed between
subjects within subjects design. The between-subjects variables were the different groups
‘ The rest, 58 children did not take part in the study because they did not meet the criteria
to be included (see design section).
99