SLT Centre Romel, South-East European Centre for Semiotic Studies, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Res Dev Disabil. 2013 Jul;34(7):2173-84. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2013.03.030. Epub 2013 May 1.
While there is mounting evidence explaining how concrete concepts are processed, the evidence demonstrating how abstract concepts are processed is rather scant. Most research illustrating how concrete and abstract concepts are processed has been obtained from adult populations. Consequently, not much is known about how these concepts are processed by children, especially those with sensorimotor impairments. This paper reports a study in which groups of children who were either visual-motor impaired (VMG), blind (BG), or sighted (CG) were requested to perform deictic gestures for temporal and spatial concepts. The results showed that: (i) spatial pointing was performed faster than temporal pointing across all groups of children; (ii) such difference in pointing times occurred also within groups; and (iii) the slowest pointing times were those of the blind children followed by the VMG and the CG children, respectively. Additionally, while CG children correctly performed the pointing tasks, VMG and, particularly, BG children relied on a form of deixis known as autotopological (or personal) deixis. The results thus suggest that deprivation or lack of sensorimotor experience with the environment affects the processing of abstract concepts and that a compensatory mechanism may be to rely on the body as a reference frame.
虽然有越来越多的证据解释了具体概念是如何被加工的，但证明抽象概念是如何被加工的证据却相当匮乏。大多数关于具体和抽象概念如何被加工的研究都是从成年人中获得的。因此，对于儿童，特别是那些有感觉运动障碍的儿童，这些概念是如何被加工的，我们知之甚少。本文报告了一项研究，要求视觉运动障碍（VMG）、失明（BG）或视力正常（CG）的儿童群体分别为时间和空间概念做指示手势。结果表明：（i）所有儿童群体的空间指向都比时间指向快；（ii）这种指向时间的差异也存在于群体内部；（iii）最慢的指向时间是盲人儿童，其次是 VMG 儿童和 CG 儿童。此外，虽然 CG 儿童正确地完成了指向任务，但 VMG 儿童，特别是 BG 儿童，依赖于一种称为自拓扑（或个人）指示的指示形式。因此，结果表明，环境中感觉运动经验的缺失或缺乏会影响抽象概念的加工，而一种补偿机制可能是依赖身体作为参考框架。
