Cohen H, Le Normand M T
Laboratoire de neuropsychologie de l'enfant, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière
Brain Lang. 1998 Oct 1;64(3):409-22. doi: 10.1006/brln.1998.1981.
The nature of cerebral involvement in the acquisition of language was addressed in this longitudinal study of children with an early diagnosis of epilepsy with simple-partial seizures (SPE) and with epileptogenic foci localized in the left frontal (LF) lobe. Yearly evaluations of six SPE-LF children on tests of linguistic comprehension (pointing, understanding of narrative, and understanding of prepositions) and production (repetition, lexical diversity, and grammatical production) were carried out between the ages of 3 and 8 years and compared to those of large samples of control children on the same tasks and at each age level. Linguistic production of all children were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using the Child Language Data Exchange System (MacWhinney & Snow, 1991). Individual evolution trajectories revealed that SPE-LF children showed a clear dissociation in linguistic performance between comprehension and production. Linguistic comprehension gradually improved to reach normal performance levels by age 7 while linguistic production, even at later stages, remained quite poor. This dissociation in the development of linguistic performance in SPE-LF children suggests a complex interplay between brain maturation dynamics and dysfunction modulating the succession of stages in language development. The observed persistent deficits in specific aspects of linguistic performance argue for an early involvement of the anterior areas of the left cerebral hemisphere in the production of language.
这项针对早期诊断为癫痫伴简单部分性发作（SPE）且致痫灶位于左额叶（LF）的儿童的纵向研究探讨了大脑在语言习得过程中的参与性质。在3至8岁之间，对6名SPE-LF儿童进行了语言理解测试（指物、叙事理解和介词理解）和语言表达测试（重复、词汇多样性和语法表达）的年度评估，并将其与同年龄段大样本对照儿童在相同任务上的测试结果进行比较。所有儿童的语言表达都进行了转录、编码，并使用儿童语言数据交换系统（MacWhinney & Snow，1991）进行分析。个体发展轨迹显示，SPE-LF儿童在语言表现上的理解和表达之间存在明显的分离。语言理解能力逐渐提高，到7岁时达到正常水平，而语言表达能力即使在后期仍相当差。SPE-LF儿童语言表现发展中的这种分离表明，大脑成熟动态和功能障碍在调节语言发展阶段的相继过程中存在复杂的相互作用。在语言表现的特定方面观察到的持续缺陷表明，左脑半球前部区域在语言产生过程中早期就已参与。
