Rose Susan A, Feldman Judith F, Jankowski Jeffery J
Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, NY, USA.
Child Dev. 2009 Jan-Feb;80(1):134-50. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01250.x.
A controversial issue in the field of language development is whether language emergence and growth is dependent solely on processes specifically tied to language or could also depend on basic cognitive processes that affect all aspects of cognitive competence (domain-general processes). The present article examines this issue using a large battery of infant information-processing measures of memory, representational competence, processing speed, and attention, many of which have been shown to predict general cognition in a cohort of full-terms and preterms. Results showed that various aspects of infant memory and representational competence (a) related to language at both 12 and 36 months, (b) predicted similarly for the two groups, and (c) predicted 36-month language, independently of birth status, 12-month language, and the 12-month Bayley Mental Development Index. Additionally, the results established predictive validity for the MacArthur 12-month language measure. These findings support a domain-general view of language.
语言发展领域中一个有争议的问题是，语言的出现和发展是否仅仅依赖于与语言专门相关的过程，还是也可能依赖于影响认知能力各个方面的基本认知过程（领域通用过程）。本文使用大量婴儿信息处理测量方法来研究这个问题，这些测量方法涉及记忆、表征能力、处理速度和注意力等方面，其中许多方法已被证明能够预测一组足月儿和早产儿的一般认知能力。结果表明，婴儿记忆和表征能力的各个方面：（a）在12个月和36个月时都与语言相关；（b）对两组的预测相似；（c）独立于出生状态、12个月时的语言能力以及12个月时的贝利心理发展指数，能够预测36个月时的语言能力。此外，研究结果确立了麦克阿瑟12个月语言测量方法的预测效度。这些发现支持了语言的领域通用观点。
