非詞覆誦作業與音韻發展之探討

Abstract

文獻中對於非辭覆誦作業所測量的能力可歸納為兩個假說，分別為音韻記憶假說及音韻覺識假說（Gathercole, 2006）。本研究旨在探究音韻記憶及音韻覺識對於孩童在非詞覆誦表現的相對預測效度，尤其關注孩童音韻能力的角色。研究中以三樣分析來觀察非詞覆誦作業及音韻發展的關係：（1）音韻發展是否直接促進非詞覆誦表現；（2）與非詞覆誦作業相關之測量彼此的相關性；（3）音韻能力對非詞覆誦作業的預測效度。參與受試者為30名三歲孩童及30名四歲孩童，其中每個年齡組裡15名孩童為實驗組，而另15名為對照組。所有孩童皆接受前測，測量作業包含：字彙量、音韻口語輸出能力、音韻覺識能力、記憶廣度、發音速度及非詞覆誦。完成前測後，實驗組接受十天的發音訓練，而對照組則未接受訓練。十天之後，所有孩童再接受後測。結果顯示發音訓練並未促進實驗組音韻能力的顯著進步，於是我們無法藉此實驗印證音韻發展與非詞覆誦作業之間的因果關係。關連性測量分析顯示與非詞覆誦作業相關的測量之間並非彼此獨立。而藉由迴歸分析我們進一步發現在非詞覆誦整體表現中，記憶廣度、音韻口語輸出能力、及發音速度有顯著貢獻，而其中又以記憶廣度的貢獻度最大。但不可忽略的是音韻口語輸出能力也有相當的貢獻度，唯音韻處理的過程可能被非詞覆誦裡的較長刺激所造成的記憶負擔所遮蔽。檢視孩童在一字非詞覆誦的表現時，孩童的音韻口語輸出能力貢獻最大，而記憶廣度僅在音韻空缺非詞一字覆誦時略有貢獻。由此研究可得知在中文孩童在覆誦非詞時，記憶量及音韻分析能力都是關鍵能力，但當新詞長度不長時，孩童當下的音韻口語輸出能力，或音韻處理能力，對習得的成功與否有決定性影響。

Two competing hypotheses are raised regarding what nonword repetition measures, respectively the phonological storage hypothesis and the phonological sensitivity hypothesis (Gathercole, 2006). The present study investigates the relative predictive power of the phonological storage and the phonological sensitivity to children's nonword repetition performance, with particular interest in the role of children's phonological abilities. The relationship between the phonological development and nonword repetition performance was inspected from three aspects: (1) the direct evidence of the facilitative role of phonological development to nonword repetition; (2) the correlational relationships among measures related to nonword repetition; (3) the predictive power of phonological development to nonword repetition, relative to phonological storage. Participants were thirty 3-year-old and thirty 4-year-old kindergarten children, half of which were assigned as the experimental groups, and the other half of which as the control groups. All the children were pretested with vocabulary size, output phonology, phonological awareness ability, digit span, articulation rate, and nonword repetition. Then the experimental groups received 10 days of articulation training; whereas the control groups received no training. Then all the children were posttested. Results showed that the articulation training didn't effectively enhance prominent growth in the experimental groups' phonological abilities; therefore, the causal relationship between children's phonological development and their performance in nonword repetition couldn’t be established. Correlation analysis revealed that abilities related to nonword repetition weren’t independent of each other. Factors contributing to nonword repetition included digit span, output phonology and articulation rate, among which digit span made the most contribution when overall performance in nonword repetition was concerned. However, the facilitative role of phonological processing was of considerable importance, whose contribution may be masked by heavy memory demand caused by the length stimuli. When children's performance in nonword 1-word list repetition was considered, children's output phonology made the greatest contribution, and digit span was effective only in gap-word 1-word list repetition. It was suggested that both memory capacity and phonological analysis ability contribute to Mandarin-speaking children's nonword repetition; however, when the novel item to be learned is short, children's output phonology, or phonological processing ability at the moment determines the success of learning.