A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

written recall assessment task (participants wrote the name and skill next to the
relevant image) was more indicative of the new learning of vocabulary. As the
recall for eye colour appeared to behave differently from the skills and names,
for example, most participants randomly chose colours stating that they were
guessing, it was decided to exclude them from the results.
Table 3.1
Preliminary Study One
Total raw scores for immediate recall
(spoken and written names and skills)
Participant Gender Age Spoken Written
Name Skill Name Skill
PS 1 Male 28;01 8 9 8 10
PS 2 Male 39;02 0 3 0 3.5
PS 3 Female 32;05 4 2 3 3
PS 4 Male 53;09 7 4 7 5.5
PS 5 Female 24;11 1 4.5 0 5
PS 6 Male 37;05 6 10 5 9
PS 7 Female 41;08 4 5.5 4 5
PS 8 Female 39;05 8 3 8 3
PS 9 Female 41;04 3 4 0 6
PS 10 Male 25;09 9 9.5 9 9.5
* PS1 = Preliminary subject 1 etc.
One-way ANOVA was conducted on both the number of word forms and number
of associative meanings of the new words (i.e. skills) learned using gender as a
factor with two levels (male and female) (SPSS for Windows, 2003). There was
found to be a significant difference in terms of gender ability to recall the new
associative meanings of the new words – F (1, 10) = 9.963, p< .01, but not for
the ability to learn the new word forms – F (1, 10) = 2.990, p= .101. Therefore,
both male and female participants had similar abilities to learn the new word
forms and male participants recalled more associative meanings than female
participants. One-way ANOVA was conducted on the number of items learned
using type of item as a factor with two levels (new word forms and new skills)
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