Phillips Caroline E, Jarrold Christopher, Baddeley Alan D, Grant Julia, Karmiloff-Smith Annette
Centre for the Study of Memory and Learning, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, UK.
Cortex. 2004 Feb;40(1):85-101. doi: 10.1016/s0010-9452(08)70922-5.
Individuals with Williams syndrome show an unusual neuropsychological profile, with relatively strong language abilities and impoverished visual and spatial abilities. Two studies are reported that examine the interaction between these two domains in Williams syndrome by assessing individuals' comprehension of spoken language with a spatial component. In a first study, the Test for Reception of Grammar (Bishop, 1983) was given to 32 individuals with Williams syndrome and to controls matched individually for total number of errors on the task. Individuals with Williams syndrome had particular problems when asked to comprehend sentences containing spatial prepositions, making significantly more errors on these items than control groups. A second study examined in more detail comprehension of sentences with spatial and non-spatial components, comparing the performance of 15 individuals with Williams syndrome and control groups matched for vocabulary ability. Individuals with Williams syndrome again showed impaired comprehension of spoken spatial terms. In contrast, they were unimpaired in comprehending utterances without a spatial component, with the exception of descriptions testing comprehension of non-spatial comparatives (lighter than and darker than). These results suggest that the spatial difficulties experienced by individuals with Williams syndrome may constrain language comprehension in certain circumstances. They also shed light on the ways in which spatial cognition may interact with language comprehension more generally.
患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体表现出一种不同寻常的神经心理学特征，其语言能力相对较强，而视觉和空间能力较弱。本文报告了两项研究，通过评估个体对包含空间成分的口语的理解，来考察威廉姆斯综合征中这两个领域之间的相互作用。在第一项研究中，对32名患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体以及在任务总错误数上单独匹配的对照组进行了语法接受测试（毕晓普，1983）。当要求患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体理解包含空间介词的句子时，他们遇到了特别的问题，在这些项目上的错误明显多于对照组。第二项研究更详细地考察了对包含空间和非空间成分的句子的理解，比较了15名患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体与在词汇能力上匹配的对照组的表现。患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体再次表现出对口语空间术语的理解受损。相比之下，他们在理解没有空间成分的话语时没有受损，但在测试对非空间比较词（比……轻和比……暗）理解的描述方面除外。这些结果表明，患有威廉姆斯综合征的个体所经历的空间困难可能在某些情况下限制语言理解。它们还揭示了空间认知更普遍地与语言理解相互作用的方式。
