唐氏症兒童語言理解與表達能力之探討

Abstract

本研究旨在探討唐氏症兒童語言理解、表達和整體語言能力，以實驗組（唐氏症組兒童）與心理年齡對照組（正常發展組兒童）兩組兒童之間的比較，瞭解相較於相同心理年齡的正常發展兒童，唐氏症兒童語言理解能力、表達能力情形。同時也以實驗組內比較的研究方法，探討唐氏症兒童本身在語言理解和表達能力間的差異，以瞭解唐氏症兒童的語言理解、表達和心理年齡之間的關係。 以「修訂學前兒童語言障礙評量表」語言理解分測驗和「修訂畢保德圖畫詞彙測驗」兩個標準化測驗評量兒童的語言理解能力；再以「修訂學前兒童語言障礙評量表」口語表達分測驗和看圖說故事（含重述故事、自發性故事兩種語言樣本誘發方式）評估唐氏症組和正常發展組兒童的語言表達能力；並以「修訂學前兒童語言障礙評量表」語言發展總分來代表兒童的整體語言能力。 結果顯示唐氏症兒童的語言理解、表達能力和整體語言能力皆顯著低於心理年齡配對的正常發展組兒童，也顯著低於其本身的心理年齡水準。唐氏症兒童的口語敘說語言樣本的總詞彙數、平均語句長度、相異詞彙數皆顯著低於正常發展兒童。而唐氏症兒童的語言理解和表達能力間沒有顯現顯著差異，但有可能是因為唐氏症兒童在標準化測驗的語言理解和口語表達分測驗的得分都很低，出現地板效應。 最後，依據本研究結果建議對唐氏症兒童實施語言教學時，應同時著重語言理解與表達能力的訓練，並提供示範的策略，及採用多元的方式評量和教學。在研究上建議可以採用不同的語言樣本誘發方式探討唐氏症兒童語言表現，及加入教師或主要照顧者的語言觀察記錄作為評量參考。The purpose of this study was to explore the language comprehension, production, and overall language abilities of children with Down syndrome, and to examine the relationship between their language abilities and mental age. Two groups of subjects, children with Down syndrome (experimental group) and mental age matched typical development children (control group), were compared on their language comprehension and production abilities. The differences of language comprehension and production within the experimental group were also examined. Standardlized tests were used to assess individual subjects’ language abilities. The subtest of language comprehension in “The Language Disorder Scale of Preschoolers” and “The Chinese Version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R)” were used to evaluate the language comprehension ability. The subtest of language production in “The Language Disorder Scale of Preschoolers” was used to assess language production. In addition, two picture-storytelling tasks were also used to collect the language samples to investigate children’s language production ability. The results of this study indicated that children with Down Syndrome exhibit poorer language comprehension, production, and overall language abilities than their mental age levels, and also inferior to the mental age control group. For the narrative abilities, children with Down Syndrome show fewer Number of Total Words, shorter Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), and less Number of Different Words (NDW) when compared to the control group. However, there were no significant differences found among the language comprehension and production abilities within the experimental group. This result might be due to that experimental group get the extremely low scores both on the standardized tests. This study suggests that both comprehension and production abilities should be emphasized in language training program to children with Down syndrome, and modeling and multiple methods of teaching and assessment should be applied. For the future study, using more comprehensive method for collecting representative language samples and including teachers and parents observation and reports should be considered.