Leroy Sandrine, Parisse Christophe, Maillart Christelle
University of Liège, Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behaviour, Liège, Belgium.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2012 Apr;26(4):380-95. doi: 10.3109/02699206.2011.641059.
Usage-based theory considers analogical reasoning as a cognitive process required in language development. We hypothesized that difficulties with analogical reasoning could hinder the abstraction of construction schemas, thus slowing down morphosyntactic development for children with specific language impairment (SLI). We also hypothesized, in accordance with usage-based theory, that the same analogy mechanism is shared by linguistic and non-linguistic processes. The current study investigated the performance of 15 children with SLI in comparison with age-matched peers on a non-linguistic analogical reasoning task. Our experimental setting targeted two prerequisites of analogical reasoning: structural alignment and the discovery of relational similarity in comparison with perceptual similarity. The results obtained are compatible with our hypotheses according to which children with SLI would encounter problems building more abstract construction schemas, related to difficulties with analogical reasoning. The study also shows that children with SLI have specific cognitive difficulties regardless of their linguistic development.
基于用法的理论将类比推理视为语言发展中所需的一种认知过程。我们假设，类比推理方面的困难可能会阻碍建构模式的抽象化，从而减缓特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童的形态句法发展。我们还根据基于用法的理论假设，语言和非语言过程共享相同的类比机制。本研究调查了15名患有SLI的儿童在非语言类比推理任务中的表现，并与年龄匹配的同龄人进行了比较。我们的实验设置针对类比推理的两个先决条件：结构对齐以及与知觉相似性相比对关系相似性的发现。所得结果与我们的假设相符，即患有SLI的儿童在构建更抽象的建构模式时会遇到问题，这与类比推理方面的困难有关。该研究还表明，患有SLI的儿童无论其语言发展如何都存在特定的认知困难。
