Durrleman Stephanie, Dumont Annie, Delage Hélène
Department Medicine, Faculty of Science and Medicine, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2021 Dec 16;27(1):89-100. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enab034.
Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) show delays in Theory of Mind (ToM) development. Complement sentences such as "Eliane says that Santa Clause exists" influence ToM performance. Can a training program targeting sentential complements enhance ToM? Twenty-one French-speaking DHH children (Mage = 8 years 11 months) with delays in ToM and sentential complements completed a first series of tests (T0). Children were tested again to control for maturation effects (T1), after which they were included in a 6- to 8-week training program targeting complements with verbs of communication. Post-training tests (T2) assessed if the training yielded improvements on complements (direct effect) and ToM (transfer effect). While no gains were noted in the absence of training (at T1), results indicate post-training (T2) improvements in complements and ToM tasks, suggesting that the acquisition of sentential complements provides a tool to represent subjective truths and boosts ToM reasoning in DDH children.
失聪或听力障碍（DHH）儿童在心理理论（ToM）发展方面存在延迟。像“伊莲娜说圣诞老人存在”这样的补语句会影响ToM表现。一个针对补语句的训练项目能否提高ToM呢？21名说法语的DHH儿童（平均年龄 = 8岁11个月）在ToM和补语句方面存在延迟，他们完成了第一系列测试（T0）。再次对儿童进行测试以控制成熟效应（T1），之后他们被纳入一个为期6至8周的针对带有交流动词的补语的训练项目。训练后测试（T2）评估训练是否在补语方面产生了进步（直接效应）以及在ToM方面产生了进步（迁移效应）。虽然在未进行训练时（T1）未发现进步，但结果表明训练后（T2）在补语和ToM任务方面有进步，这表明补语句的习得为表征主观事实提供了一种工具，并促进了DHH儿童的ToM推理。
