Spanoudis George
Department of Psychology and Centre for Applied Neuroscience, University of Cyprus, Kallipoleos 75, P.O. Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus.
J Commun Disord. 2016 May-Jun;61:83-96. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2016.04.003. Epub 2016 Apr 11.
Research on the relationship between aspects of language development and Theory of Mind (ToM) in children with language impairments suggests that children with language impairment show a delay in ToM development. This study aimed to examine the relationships of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic skills with ToM in school-age children. Twenty children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) aged 9-12 years and two control groups, one matched for chronological age (CA) and one for language ability (LA) (aged 8-10 years) were compared on a set of language tasks tapping syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic skills and on an advanced test of ToM. Results showed that children with SLI performed poorly on the ToM task compared to the CA matches. Also, analysis showed that language skills and ToM are related and that syntactic and pragmatic abilities contributed significantly to the prediction of ToM performance in the SLI group. It is concluded that the syntax/pragmatic aspects of the language impact on ToM understanding in children with SLI.
对语言障碍儿童语言发展各方面与心理理论（ToM）之间关系的研究表明，语言障碍儿童在心理理论发展方面存在延迟。本研究旨在考察学龄儿童句法、语义和语用技能与心理理论之间的关系。选取了20名9至12岁的特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童以及两个对照组，一个按实际年龄（CA）匹配，另一个按语言能力（LA）匹配（8至10岁），让他们完成一系列考察句法、语义和语用技能的语言任务以及一项心理理论进阶测试。结果显示，与按实际年龄匹配的儿童相比，患有特定语言障碍的儿童在心理理论任务上表现较差。此外，分析表明语言技能与心理理论相关，并且句法和语用能力对特定语言障碍组心理理论表现的预测有显著贡献。研究得出结论，语言的句法/语用方面会影响特定语言障碍儿童对心理理论的理解。
