Yarbay Duman Tuba, Blom Elma, Topbaş Seyhun
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2015 Apr;58(2):410-21. doi: 10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-14-0054.
This study investigated the comprehension of counterfactual conditionals in monolingual Turkish children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Comprehending counterfactuals requires a well-developed cognitive system (Beck, Riggs, & Gorniak, 2009). Children with SLI have impaired cognitive functioning (Im-Bolter, Johnston, & Pascual-Leone, 2006), which affects their ability to comprehend counterfactuals.
The sample consisted of 13 children (9 boys, 4 girls) with SLI who were matched in age and nonverbal intelligence with 13 TD children (8 boys, 5 girls; mean age 6;9 [years; months] for both groups). Each group completed a sentence comprehension and repetition task with 3 sentence conditions: nonconditional, factual, and counterfactual. Nonconditionals did not have if-embedding, whereas factual and counterfactual conditionals were morphosyntactically equivalent if-clauses, but only the latter was cognitively complex.
Conditionals were more difficult to comprehend than nonconditionals for both groups. Counterfactuals were more difficult to comprehend than the morphosyntactically equivalent factual counterparts for the SLI group. There was no discrepancy between the groups for repetition of counterfactuals and factuals.
Children with SLI have difficulty processing counterfactuals due to morphosyntactic complexity (if-embedding) and the cognitive processes involved in comprehending counterfactuals. This indicates that cognitive complexity adds to sentence comprehension deficits in SLI.
本研究调查了患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的单语土耳其儿童和发育正常（TD）儿童对反事实条件句的理解。理解反事实需要一个发育良好的认知系统（贝克、里格斯和戈尔尼亚克，2009年）。患有SLI的儿童认知功能受损（尹-博尔特、约翰斯顿和帕斯夸尔-莱昂内，2006年），这影响了他们理解反事实的能力。
样本包括13名患有SLI的儿童（9名男孩，4名女孩），他们在年龄和非语言智力方面与13名TD儿童（8名男孩，5名女孩；两组平均年龄均为6岁9个月）相匹配。每组儿童完成一项句子理解和重复任务，该任务有3种句子条件：非条件句、事实条件句和反事实条件句。非条件句没有“if”嵌入，而事实条件句和反事实条件句在形态句法上是等效的“if”从句，但只有后者在认知上更为复杂。
两组儿童理解条件句都比理解非条件句更困难。对于SLI组儿童来说，理解反事实条件句比理解形态句法上等效的事实条件句更困难。在反事实条件句和事实条件句的重复方面，两组之间没有差异。
患有SLI的儿童由于形态句法复杂性（“if”嵌入）以及理解反事实条件句所涉及的认知过程，在处理反事实条件句时存在困难。这表明认知复杂性加剧了SLI儿童在句子理解方面的缺陷。
