Narrative abilities, memory and attention in children with a specific language impairment
Narrative abilities, memory and attention in children with a specific language impairment
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1460-6984.2012.00164.x
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发表时间：
2012-09-01
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Scheper, Annette
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Duinmeijer, Iris;de Jong, Jan;Scheper, Annette
背景：虽然叙事任务已被证明是检测语言障碍、衡量沟通技巧和预测未来学业成绩的有效措施，但对不同叙事任务的可比性的研究表明，结果取决于所使用的任务类型。尽管许多检测任务差异的研究都涉及这样一个事实：任务对听觉注意力和记忆力等认知能力有不同的要求，但很少有研究将特定的叙事任务与这些认知能力联系起来。对于患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的儿童来说，检查这种关系尤其必要，他们的特点是语言问题，但通常在其他认知领域也存在问题。方法和程序：在当前的研究中，对一组 SLI 儿童 (n= 34) 和同一年龄范围的典型发育组 (n= 38) 的故事重述任务（公交车故事）和故事生成任务（青蛙故事）进行了比较。除了两项叙述任务外，还测量了持续听觉注意力 (TEA-Ch) 和言语工作记忆（WISC 数字跨度和荷兰语版本的 CVLT-C 单词列表回忆）。计算叙述、记忆和注意力分数之间的相关性。结果与结果：小组比较显示，患有 SLI 的儿童在多项叙事测量以及持续听觉注意力和言语工作记忆方面的得分明显低于正常发育的儿童。对两个叙事任务的分数进行受试者内部比较，显示了几个叙事测量任务之间的对比。此外，相关分析表明，在情节结构层面上，故事生成任务与持续的听觉注意力相关，而故事复述任务与单词列表回忆相关。另一方面，平均话语长度（MLU）与数字跨度相关，但与持续的听觉注意力无关。结论：虽然患有 SLI 的儿童总体上在叙述方面存在问题，但他们的表现也取决于用于研究或诊断的特定启发任务。不同的叙事任务会产生不同的分数，并且与注意力和记忆力等认知技能有不同的相关性，这使得给定任务的选择在临床环境中至关重要。
Background: While narrative tasks have proven to be valid measures for detecting language disorders, measuring communicative skills and predicting future academic performance, research into the comparability of different narrative tasks has shown that outcomes are dependent on the type of task used. Although many of the studies detecting task differences touch upon the fact that tasks place differential demands on cognitive abilities like auditory attention and memory, few studies have related specific narrative tasks to these cognitive abilities. Examining this relation is especially warranted for children with specific language impairment (SLI), who are characterized by language problems, but often have problems in other cognitive domains as well. Methods & Procedures: In the current research, a comparison was made between a story retelling task (The Bus Story) and a story generation task (The Frog Story) in a group of children with SLI (n= 34) and a typically developing group (n= 38) from the same age range. In addition to the two narrative tasks, sustained auditory attention (TEA-Ch) and verbal working memory (WISC digit span and the Dutch version of the CVLT-C word list recall) were measured. Correlations were computed between the narrative, the memory and the attention scores. Outcomes & Results: A group comparison showed that the children with SLI scored significantly worse than the typically developing children on several narrative measures as well as on sustained auditory attention and verbal working memory. A within-subjects comparison of the scores on the two narrative tasks showed a contrast between the tasks on several narrative measures. Furthermore, correlational analyses showed that, on the level of plot structure, the story generation task correlated with sustained auditory attention, while the story retelling task correlated with word list recall. Mean length of utterance (MLU) on the other hand correlated with digit span but not with sustained auditory attention. Conclusions: While children with SLI have problems with narratives in general, their performance is also dependent on the specific elicitation task used for research or diagnostics. Various narrative tasks generate different scores and are differentially correlated to cognitive skills like attention and memory, making the selection of a given task crucial in the clinical setting.