The use of props in a syntactic awareness task

The study investigated the effects of using props to illustrate the meaning of sentences in a syntactic awareness task in which subjects were required to correct ungrammatical sentences. Forty preschool children (aged 4; 11 to 5; 11) were asked to correct 20 sentences, 10 of which were illustrated using props, and 10 of which were not. Children scored significantly higher in the props condition though the proportion of meaning-changing errors to total errors was not significantly lower in this condition. It is argued that the use of props, by providing contextual support, reduces the processing capacity required to complete the task.