特定型语言障碍儿童音韵短期记忆能力之初探

Phonological Short-Term Memory in Children with Specific Language Impairment

近几年来，英美有愈来愈多的研究尝试找出造成特定型语言障碍儿童（children with Specific language impairment, SLI）语言习得困难的原因，其中更有很多实证性资料显示，音韵短期记忆缺陷（phonological short-term memory deficit）似乎可解释儿童语言障碍的问题。而研究者则常以非词复述（nonword repetition）测量儿童的音韵短期记忆。虽然，几乎所有研究结果都倾向支持上述论点，然而这些发现都是来自习英文特定型语言障碍儿童的研究，在解释及推论上有其限制。因此，本研究乃以习声调语言角度探讨台湾特定型语言障碍儿童的音韵短期记忆，以期能让我们对特定型语言障碍的共通特徵或语言学习历程有更深一层之认识。综合本研究结果，显示：（1）习华语特定型语言障碍儿童的音韵短期记忆能力显着低於同龄一般儿童。（2）习华语特定型语言障碍儿童无论是在复述二、三、四音节或五音节非词的表现，都显着落於一般儿童之後，且会随音节数加长而表现更差。（3）即使将声韵觉识能力或是音韵区辨能力控制後，习华语特定型语言障碍儿童的音韵短期忆能力仍然显着低於同龄一般儿童。（4）特定型语言障碍儿童与一般儿童的音韵短期记忆能力与多项口语理解能力皆未有显着相关。整体而言，本研究的结果与国外研究发现一致，支持特定型语言障儿童音韵短期记忆缺陷的论点。

Phonological short-term memory plays central roles in language processing. In the past few years, there has been an increased interest in exploring the relationship between working memory and child language impairment in SLI study. It was found that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have particular limitations in storing linguistic information. Investigators employed nonword repetition paradigm to measure these children's phonological short-term memory, and constantly found that children with SLI demonstrated poorer performances on these tasks. Although these findings have shed light on the relationship between phonological short-term memory and language impairment, most of the evidence found in the research came from English-speaking children. Mandarin-Chinese is a very different language system as compared to English in terms of its phonological system, word structure and sentence structure, which makes it a good candidate to explore this unique language impairment from a cross-linguistic perspective. Moreover, previous research did not take into account the effect of phonological awareness or phonological discrimination on nonword repetition performance in children with SLI. Therefore, the current study tried to explore the issue from a cross-linguistic perspective. Overall, it was found that Mandarin Chinese speaking children with SLI evidenced phonological short-term memory deficit as compared to their normal peers. Even taking into account the influence of phonological awareness or phonological discrimination aspects, Mandarin Chinese speaking children with SLI still performed less well on nonword repetition task. In addition, the association between phonological short-term memory and oral language comprehension was found not to be related.