Ford Janet A, Milosky Linda M
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008 Apr;51(2):367-80. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2008/027).
This study examined whether young children with typical language development (TL) and children with language impairment (LI) make emotion inferences online during the process of discourse comprehension, identified variables that predict emotion inferencing, and explored the relationship of these variables to social competence.
Preschool children (16 TL and 16 LI) watched narrated videos designed to activate knowledge about a particular emotional state. Following each story, children named a facial expression that either matched or did not match the anticipated emotion. Several experimental tasks examined linguistic and nonlinguistic abilities. Finally, each child's teacher completed a measure of social competence.
Children with TL named expressions significantly more slowly in the mismatched condition than in the matched condition, whereas children with LI did not differ in response times between the conditions. Language and vocal response time measures were related to emotion inferencing ability, and this ability predicted social competence scores.
The findings suggest that children with TL are inferring emotions during the comprehension process, whereas children with LI often fail to make these inferences. Making emotion inferences is related to discourse comprehension and to social competence in children. The current findings provide evidence that language and vocal response time measures predicted inferencing ability and suggest that additional factors may influence discourse inferencing and social competence.
本研究考察了语言发展正常（TL）的幼儿和语言障碍（LI）儿童在语篇理解过程中是否能在线进行情绪推理，确定了预测情绪推理的变量，并探讨了这些变量与社会能力的关系。
学龄前儿童（16名TL儿童和16名LI儿童）观看了旨在激活关于特定情绪状态知识的旁白视频。每个故事之后，孩子们要说出一个与预期情绪相符或不符的面部表情。通过几个实验任务考察语言和非语言能力。最后，每个孩子的老师完成了一项社会能力测评。
在不匹配条件下，TL儿童说出表情的速度明显比匹配条件下慢，而LI儿童在两种条件下的反应时间没有差异。语言和声音反应时间测量与情绪推理能力相关，并且这种能力预测了社会能力得分。
研究结果表明，TL儿童在理解过程中能够推理情绪，而LI儿童往往无法进行这些推理。进行情绪推理与儿童的语篇理解和社会能力有关。目前的研究结果提供了证据，表明语言和声音反应时间测量能够预测推理能力，并表明其他因素可能会影响语篇推理和社会能力。
