Centre de Recherches en Psychologie, Cognition et Communication (EA 1285), Université de Rennes 2, France.
Res Dev Disabil. 2010 Mar-Apr;31(2):608-16. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2009.12.011. Epub 2010 Jan 25.
This study looks at idiom comprehension by French-speaking people with Williams' syndrome (WS) and metapragmatic knowledge is examined. Idiomatic expressions are a nonliteral form of language where there is a considerable difference between what is said (literal interpretation) and what is meant (idiomatic interpretation). WS is characterized by a relatively preserved formal language, social interest and poor conversational skills. Using this framework, the present study aims to explore the comprehension of idiomatic expressions by 20 participants with WS. Participants performed a story completion task (comprehension task), and a task of metapragmatic knowledge to justify their chosen answers. WS performances were compared to typically developing children with the same verbal mental age. The main results can be summarized as follows: (1) people with WS have difficulties to understand idioms; (2) WS group seems to perform partly as typically developing children for the acquisition of metapragmatic knowledge of linguistic convention: there is a progressive increase in metapragmatic knowledge of linguistic convention as age increased. Our results indicate a delay of acquisition in idiom comprehension in Williams' syndrome.
这项研究着眼于法语为母语的威廉姆斯综合征（WS）患者对成语的理解，并考察了元语用知识。成语是一种非字面语言形式，其中所说的内容（字面解释）和意思（成语解释）之间存在相当大的差异。WS 的特征是相对保留的形式语言、社会兴趣和较差的会话技能。基于这一框架，本研究旨在探索 20 名 WS 患者对成语的理解。参与者完成了一个故事完成任务（理解任务），以及一个元语用知识任务来证明他们选择的答案。将 WS 的表现与具有相同言语心理年龄的典型发育儿童进行比较。主要结果可以概括如下：（1）WS 患者理解成语有困难；（2）WS 组似乎部分表现出与典型发育儿童相同的语言惯例元语用知识获取：随着年龄的增长，语言惯例的元语用知识呈递增趋势。我们的研究结果表明，WS 患者在成语理解方面存在获取上的延迟。
