Remédiation cognitive sur l’activité de catégorisation chez des enfants déficients intellectuels moyens et sévères

Abstract

ObjectivesCategorization as an essential element of the behavior adaptability allows to deduce invisible properties and to make predictions about the behavior of the components of our environment. There are different types of classifications, which classify objects in different ways: perceptive organization, thematic organization, taxonomic treatment, etc. The objective of this study is to know if classification standard, used by medium and severe deficient intellectual children are the same as those of the typically developing children of the same chronological age, in front of images of objects belonging to the world of the living (animals and plants) and non-living (artefacts). Patients and subjectsThe children were submitted to learning to know if after a cognitive remediation, the children presenting intellectual disabilities are able to acquire taxonomic categorization as the typically developing children of the same age. Ten educated children typically developing in 3rd year of primary school and 4th year of primary school and ten intellectual disabilities children amongst six children enrolled in IME (Medical Educational Institute) and four taken care in a SESSAD, all aged eight to ten years, participated in this research. Two free-sorting tasks, consisted each of twenty-four images to every child, were proposed to distinguish the various activities of categorization of children and see a possible evolution in the acquisition of taxonomic category. ResultsThe results are compared with a pre-test using the same images. They show that children with intellectual disabilities have better performance in the taxonomic categorization after cognitive remediation, although the performance of these children remains below those of typically developing children. Cognitive remediation therefore gives access to a taxonomic classification, but is not built spontaneously by children with intellectual disabilities. Variability of responses and stiffness categories considered are observable in these children. ConclusionOur experiments show that cognitive remediation has a positive effect in the categorization process in children with intellectual disabilities, but the results we report suggest that these children are not able to conceptualize categories.