Albano Stefania, Piccardi Laura, Pizzamiglio Maria Rosa, Volpe Cristino, D'Amico Simonetta
Dipartimento di Psicologia Dinamica e Clinica, Università di Roma Sapienza, Italy.
J Genet Psychol. 2013 Jan-Feb;174(1):51-72. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2011.639409.
The authors investigated narrative competence, sociocognitive abilities and emotion comprehension in a 9-year-old child (FS) with Cri-du-Chat Syndrome (CdCS) who had only a mild mental delay and relatively preserved language. Considering that the production of narratives is a major step in development and in the acquisition of learning skills related to conceptual, linguistic, structural, and pragmatic knowledge, and in the development of psychological lexicon, that is, the ability to use theory of mind (ToM) processes also in atypical development, this case provided an opportunity to study aspects of this genetic syndrome never investigated before. The authors found that the child's performance on different stories was comparable to that of chronological age controls for several narrative and emotional competences and even better than that of mental age controls. However, her ability to reason was still incomplete according ToM; in fact, FS was able to express her mental states, but she was unable to understand emotions, specifically mixed emotions. This finding suggests that in CdCS children with a well-developed language narrative and emotional competence could be a point of strength for improving their social skills with important effects on their familiar and school life. Also in CdCS children with the typical poor developed language, the narrative discourse could be introduced in their communication by means of any type of alternative language (i.e., sign language or augmentative and alternative communication) to improve their social abilities and to reduce behavioral disorders due to the difficulty in expressing their personal experiences.
作者对一名患有猫叫综合征（CdCS）的9岁儿童（FS）的叙事能力、社会认知能力和情绪理解能力进行了研究。该儿童仅有轻度智力迟缓，语言能力相对保留。鉴于叙事的产生是发展过程中的一个重要步骤，也是获取与概念、语言、结构和语用知识相关的学习技能以及心理词汇发展（即在非典型发展中运用心理理论（ToM）过程的能力）的重要步骤，该病例为研究这种遗传综合征以前从未研究过的方面提供了一个机会。作者发现，在几个叙事和情感能力方面，该儿童在不同故事上的表现与实际年龄对照组相当，甚至优于心理年龄对照组。然而，根据心理理论，她的推理能力仍然不完整；事实上，FS能够表达自己的心理状态，但她无法理解情绪，特别是混合情绪。这一发现表明，在语言发展良好的猫叫综合征儿童中，叙事和情感能力可能是提高他们社交技能的优势，对他们的家庭和学校生活有重要影响。同样，对于典型语言发展较差的猫叫综合征儿童，可以通过任何类型的替代语言（即手语或辅助和替代沟通方式）在他们的交流中引入叙事话语，以提高他们的社交能力，并减少由于难以表达个人经历而导致的行为障碍。
