以工作記憶與創造力解析資優生的句法理解歷程

Deciphering Syntactic Processing of Gifted Students with Working Memory and Creativity

語言能力是通往學習的敲門磚，本研究的目的是探討資優生的閱讀理解能力，採用具有漢語特殊性的偏導語句（花園路徑句）來探討句法處理的運作，並釐清工作記憶與創造力在背後扮演的角色。研究一邀請資優生與一般生閱讀偏導語句的材料，瞭解兩組受試者的理解能力是否有差異。為了探究讀者在偏導語句的表現是否和其工作記憶廣度及創造力有關，我們測量參與者的工作記憶廣度（研究二），並且施以威廉斯創造力測驗的「創造性思考活動」量表（研究三）。研究一發現，資優生的閱讀理解表現顯著地優於一般生，而且偏導句比起對照句更能區別資優生與一般生的閱讀理解能力。研究二發現，具有高工作記憶廣度的資優生在偏導句上表現較好，表示工作記憶廣度可能是影響讀者處理漢語偏導語句的心智運作因素。研究三發現，偏導句理解與創造力的「獨創性」有顯著的相關，顯示創造力的成分也反映在偏導句的處理歷程中。偏導句的理解分別與工作記憶和創造力有相關，但工作記憶與創造力之間相關不顯著。本研究發現資優生和一般生在句法處理上表現出明顯的差異，其背後有兩個獨立的重要因素─工作記憶與創造力，可為資優生的語文能力提供進一步的解析。

Language abilities are indispensable building blocks in all domains of learning. The current research focuses on reading comprehension at the sentence level with an emphasis on syntactic processes. The main purpose here is to investigate the reading ability of gifted high school students by adopting a reading comprehension test of garden-path sentences (GPS) (Study 1). To further decipher the mechanism underlying syntactic processes, participants' working memory span (Study 2) and creativity (Study 3) were measured. Results revealed that, in Study 1, gifted students proved to have an overall advantage over the students in the control group. The advantage shown by gifted students was larger in GPS than in the control ones. In Study 2, gifted students with a high working memory span performed better in reading comprehension tasks than those with a low working memory span. In Study 3, a correlation analysis showed that reading comprehension of the GPS correlated with both working memory span and creativity, respectively. However, no correlation was found between working memory span and creativity. In conclusion, our research found that the gifted students showed the advantage of reading comprehension at the sentence level. Both working memory and creativity are important for the reading comprehension of the GPS, but their contributions are mutually independent.