Durrleman Stephanie, Burnel Morgane, De Villiers Jill Gibson, Thommen Evelyne, Yan Rachel, Delage Hélène
Department of Psycholinguistics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Department of Linguistics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2019 Nov 19;10:2478. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02478. eCollection 2019.
Training on complements in English, German, and Mandarin has been reported to trigger improvements on both complements and Theory of Mind (ToM), with typically developing (TD) pre-schoolers on the verge of developing these skills (Hale and Tager-Flusberg, 2003; Lohmann and Tomasello, 2003; Shuliang et al., 2014). In the current study, we build on the idea that increasing mastery of complementation holds the promise of enhancing ToM, and seek (i) to replicate the positive effects observed in previous work for this effect in French-speaking TD children, and (ii) to pilot extending this to clinical children, more specifically those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), through exploring whether improvement in the latter, clinical groups follows that of the TD group. Sixty children with ToM difficulties, 16 with ASD (aged 5;6-11;8), 20 with DLD (aged 4;8-9;0) and 24 typically developing children aged (2;9-5;3 years), participated in a 4-week training program. Half received training targeting sentential complements and half received a control training targeting lexical skills. Complementation training, but not lexical training, led to a significant direct increase in complements, and also had the indirect effect of significantly boosting belief reasoning. TD and clinical groups followed the same patterns of performance. These results confirm previous findings in other languages for TD, and further suggest promising new directions for therapeutic programs addressing ToM delays in populations of different aetiologies, namely the incorporation of a motivating training on complementation.
据报道，针对英语、德语和普通话中的补语进行训练，能够在补语和心理理论（ToM）方面都带来提升，对于正处于这些技能发展边缘的典型发展（TD）学龄前儿童来说也是如此（黑尔和塔杰-弗卢斯伯格，2003年；洛曼和托马塞洛，2003年；舒亮等人，2014年）。在本研究中，我们基于这样一种观点，即对补语掌握程度的提高有望增强心理理论，并寻求（i）在讲法语的典型发展儿童中复制先前研究中观察到的这种积极效果，以及（ii）通过探索临床儿童，更具体地说是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）和发育性语言障碍（DLD）儿童，是否会像典型发展儿童组一样出现改善，从而尝试将此扩展到临床儿童群体。60名有心理理论困难的儿童参与了一项为期4周的训练项目，其中16名患有自闭症谱系障碍（年龄在5岁6个月至11岁8个月之间），20名患有发育性语言障碍（年龄在4岁8个月至9岁之间），24名典型发展儿童（年龄在2岁9个月至5岁3岁之间）。一半儿童接受针对句子补语的训练，另一半接受针对词汇技能的对照训练。补语训练而非词汇训练导致补语能力显著直接提高，并且还产生了显著促进信念推理的间接效果。典型发展儿童组和临床儿童组表现出相同的模式。这些结果证实了先前在其他语言中针对典型发展儿童的研究发现，并进一步为针对不同病因人群心理理论延迟的治疗项目提出了有前景的新方向，即纳入一项关于补语的激励性训练。
