Department for Special Education and Rehabilitation, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
PLoS One. 2018 Jun 27;13(6):e0199743. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199743. eCollection 2018.
Comprehending natural language quantifiers (like many, all, or some) involves linguistic and numerical abilities. However, the extent to which both factors play a role is controversial. In order to determine the specific contributions of linguistic and number skills in quantifier comprehension, we examined two groups of participants that differ in their language abilities while their number skills appear to be similar: Participants with Down syndrome (DS) and participants with Williams syndrome (WS). Compared to rather poor linguistic skills of individuals with DS, individuals with WS display relatively advanced language abilities. Participants with WS also outperformed participants with DS in a quantifier comprehension task while number knowledge did not differ between the two groups. When compared to typically developing (TD) children of the same mental age, participants with WS displayed similar levels regarding quantifier abilities, but participants with DS performed worse than the control group. Language abilities but not number skills also significantly predicted quantifier knowledge in a linear regression analysis, stressing the importance of linguistic abilities for quantifier comprehension. In addition to determining the skills that are relevant for comprehending quantifiers, our findings provide the first demonstration of how quantifiers are acquired by individuals with DS and WS, an issue not investigated so far.
理解自然语言量词（如 many、all 或 some）需要语言和数字能力。然而，这两个因素的作用程度存在争议。为了确定量词理解中语言和数字技能的具体贡献，我们检查了两组参与者，他们的语言能力不同，而他们的数字技能似乎相似：唐氏综合征（Down syndrome，DS）患者和威廉姆斯综合征（Williams syndrome，WS）患者。与 DS 患者较差的语言能力相比，WS 患者表现出相对先进的语言能力。WS 患者在量词理解任务中表现优于 DS 患者，而两组的数字知识没有差异。与具有相同心理年龄的典型发育（TD）儿童相比，WS 患者的量词能力相似，但 DS 患者的表现不如对照组。线性回归分析表明，语言能力而不是数字能力显著预测了量词知识，这强调了语言能力对量词理解的重要性。除了确定理解量词相关的技能外，我们的研究结果还首次证明了 DS 和 WS 患者是如何获得量词的，这是一个迄今尚未研究的问题。
