Diamond Adele
Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, 2255 Westbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 2A1.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2006 May;10(5):212-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.03.003. Epub 2006 Apr 3.
The age at which infants can demonstrate the ability to deduce abstract rules can be reduced by more than half, from 21 months to 9 months. The key is to introduce a physical connection between the items to be conceptually related. I argue here that making the same change in how items are presented might also help some preschoolers with learning delays, especially some children with autism. I also suggest that the roles of premotor and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices in deducing abstract rules might have been misinterpreted behaviorally and anatomically. The crucial brain region may be the periarcuate, which partially overlaps both premotor and lateral prefrontal cortex. The cognitive ability made possible by this region might be something far more elementary than previously considered: the ability to perceive conceptual connections in the absence of physical connection.
婴儿能够展现出推断抽象规则能力的年龄可以减少一半以上，从21个月降至9个月。关键在于在概念上相关的物品之间引入一种物理联系。我在此认为，在物品呈现方式上做出同样的改变可能也有助于一些有学习障碍的学龄前儿童，尤其是一些自闭症儿童。我还提出，运动前区和腹外侧前额叶皮质在推断抽象规则中的作用在行为和解剖学上可能被误解了。关键的脑区可能是弓状周围区域，它部分地与运动前区和外侧前额叶皮质重叠。由该区域实现的认知能力可能比之前认为的要基础得多：即在没有物理联系的情况下感知概念联系的能力。
