摘要
Childhood is a critical period for language development, and it is of great importance to discover normal language development and any specific language impairment （SLI） in child language acquisition and then to give them timely diagnosis and treatment. Also it has been previously shown that the non-word repetition task is an efficient assessment tool to screen out those children suspected with SLI. Based on this premise, the present study examined whether the non-word repetition task can be a suitable screening tool to detect language disorders for preschool children in Mandarin Chinese in China. A non-word repetition task was adapted specifically for this purpose. This study examined differences in non-word repetition performance of Mandarin-speaking preschool children screened by a criterion-referenced diagnostic test of specific language impairment （SLI） （the value of Cronbach Alpha at 0.86）. A sample of 282 children were administered the diagnostic test, and a total of 23 SLI suspects were screened out as their language ability measures deviated from the mean by 1.5 SDs. Results indicated that children with SLI made no error with respect to tone in Mandarin, but they showed great difficulty in non-word repetition skills compared to age-matched controls. The findings confirmed that the non-word repetition task is a culturally nonbiased index of language disorders, and that two syllable non-words can be used to identify language disorder.
童年时期是语言发展和语言诊断的关键时期,因此学龄前儿童的语言评估非常重要,有利于单纯性语言障碍儿童的早发现和早治疗。以往研究表明,非词重复任务是甄别语言的正常发展及单纯性语言障碍的一个有效的检测手段。基于以上原因,本研究测试了普通话学龄前儿童在非词重复任务中的能力差异,并依据标准参照诊断测试的方式筛选出单纯性语言障碍儿童(信度系数为0.86)。此次诊断实验共测试282名儿童样本,依据语言能力偏离(低于)平均值1.5个方差的计算方式,共筛选出23名疑似单纯性语言障碍儿童。结果表明,与同龄的正常儿童相比,单纯性语言障碍儿童在普通话的音调上没有问题,但在非词重复任务上却表现出较大的困难。实验结果同时也证实,非词重复任务是检测语言障碍的无偏指数,双音节的非词测试可以作为排查语言障碍的一个手段。
基金
supported by the Child Caring Center, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
