Reilly J S, Bates E A, Marchman V A
San Diego State University, CA 92182, USA.
Brain Lang. 1998 Feb 15;61(3):335-75. doi: 10.1006/brln.1997.1882.
Children with early brain damage, unlike adult stroke victims, often go on to develop nearly normal language. However, the route and extent of their linguistic development are still unclear, as is the relationship between lesion site and patterns of delay and recovery. Here we address these questions by examining narratives from children with early brain damage. Thirty children (ages 3:7-10:10) with pre- or perinatal unilateral focal brain damage and their matched controls participated in a storytelling task. Analyses focused on linguistic proficiency and narrative competence. Overall, children with brain damage scored significantly lower than their age-matched controls on both linguistic (morphological and syntactic) indices and those targeting broader narrative qualities. Rather than indicating that children with brain damage fully catch up, these data suggest that deficits in linguistic abilities reassert themselves as children face new linguistic challenges. Interestingly, after age 5, site of lesion does not appear to be a significant factor and the delays we have witnessed do not map onto the lesion profiles observed in adults with analogous brain injuries.
与成年中风患者不同，早期脑损伤的儿童往往能发展出近乎正常的语言能力。然而，他们语言发展的途径和程度仍不明确，损伤部位与延迟和恢复模式之间的关系也是如此。在这里，我们通过研究早期脑损伤儿童的叙述来解决这些问题。30名患有产前或围产期单侧局灶性脑损伤的儿童（年龄在3岁7个月至10岁10个月之间）及其匹配的对照组参与了一项讲故事任务。分析集中在语言能力和叙事能力上。总体而言，脑损伤儿童在语言（形态和句法）指标以及针对更广泛叙事质量的指标上的得分显著低于年龄匹配的对照组。这些数据并非表明脑损伤儿童能完全赶上，而是表明随着儿童面临新的语言挑战，语言能力的缺陷会再次显现出来。有趣的是，5岁以后，损伤部位似乎不是一个重要因素，而且我们所观察到的延迟情况与患有类似脑损伤的成年人中观察到的损伤情况并不对应。
