Θεωρία του νου και ειδική γλωσσική διαταραχή σε παιδιά σχολικής ηλικίας

Abstract

Language and Theory of Mind (ToM) develop rapidly in the first five years of life. The limited available research examining the relationship between aspects of language development and ToM in children with language disorders suggests that SLI children show a delay in the development of ToM because of a broad range of language impairments.The present study aimed to examine the relationships of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic skills with the ability to understand mental states in school-aged children. Three questions guided the present study. The first question addressed whether school-aged children with SLI have difficulty understanding ToM. The second question concerned the relationship between language and ToM in children with SLI, and the third question focused on the examination of the language skills that better predict performance on ToM tasks. Twenty-one children with SLI, aged 8-12 years were matched on chronological age, nonverbal intelligence, gender, and socioeconomic status with 21 typically developing children (TDC) and compared on a set of language tasks (tapping syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic abilities) and an advanced test of ToM. Results showed that children with SLI performed more poorly on the ToM task compared to the TDC group. Also, analysis showed that language skills and ToM are correlated and that syntactic and semantic abilities contributed significantly to the prediction of ToM performance in the SLI group. It is concluded that childrenwith SLI tend to focus on the semantic and syntactic properties of the language in order to decipher the communicative messages conveyed in speech.