Semantic clusters hinder adult beginners

Further to my post a couple of days ago re semantic clusters hindering learning, I found an interesting bit of research from the ELTJ March 2009.

The research concludes that....

adult beginners performed significantly better on the unrelated vocabulary test than on the related vocabulary test

children (intermediate level) showed no significant difference in test scores between related and unrelated vocabulary

This suggests tentatively that the presentation of unrelated vocabulary may assist learning of new L2 words more than related vocabulary only at beginners’ level (adults).

I am getting more and more interested in this subject, as it seems to buck the trend of vocab teaching and I have just started a new crop of courses of real / false starter adult beginners.
(Apology if this is old news to everyone and I've only just stumbled upon it!)

Has anyone out there (more knowledgeable and experienced than me) already changed the nature of their lessons in terms of giving vocab in non-related clusters?

If so, have you noticed any discernible improvement in Ss vocab recall after such a change??

I'd be very interested to get some feedback from anyone who has successfully taught vocab in this way and what the student reactions were?? Did the students think that there was no method and that they were suddenly presented with a load of random words???