自閉症類障礙兒童的私語表現初探

A Preliminary Study on Private Speech in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

本研究觀察以中文為母語之自閉症類障礙（Autism Spectrum Disorders）兒童私語的表現。Vygotsky 將兒童自言自語的現象稱之為「私語」（private speech），並認為私語源於社會互動中的對話，協助個體在問題解決過程中，透過私語進行自我對話，引導行為與注意力。自閉症類障礙兒童特殊的社會化模式，獨特的語言發展過程，以及認知發展與語言發展之間的不同步等現象，使其私語表現成為理論上與實質上都需要被釐清的議題。本研究以自閉症類障礙兒童為對象，觀察在面對認知作業的問題解決過程中其私語表現，並測量其語言能力及與其認知能力相關的作業解題表現，以試圖釐清私語表現型態，私語表現與語言之間的關連性，及私語表現與認知能力之間的關連性。本研究共分析29 位參與者的私語資料（男：女 = 26：3，7 歲3 月─13 歲4 月，平均9.34 歲（SD = 1.65 歲））。結果顯示，自閉症類障礙兒童未分類的整體私語發展無明顯趨勢，然而隨著語言能力的精進，與作業相關私語以及與作業不相關私語之單位時間的平均語句數有增大的趨勢。此外，自閉症類障礙兒童私語發展呈現明顯的個別變異，語言能力越好的自閉症類障礙兒童，其間個體差異就越大，此差異可能反映自閉症類障礙兒童的語言與認知能力非平行發展的現象。

According to Vygotsky, private speech plays an essential role in forming thoughts and concepts as it guides and regulates problem-solving processes. It has been used successfully to teach both typically developing children and children with special needs how to self-regulate behavior, including emotion, social skills and cognitive function. Not many studies have examined the development of private speech in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This study is the first to examine private speech in Mandarin-speaking children with ASD in Taiwan. Methods: Thirty research participants with ASD were recruited, and their private speech was recorded and analyzed. The private speech data were collected from two problem-solving situations, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task and Tower of London. Their language abilities were assessed with WISC-III. These data were collected in order to clarify relations between private speech and each of the abilities (language abilities and problem solving performance). Findings: Only 29 participants completed the tasks (26 male, 3 female; chronological age ranged from 7 years 3 months to 13 years 4 months (M = 9.34 years, S.D. = 1.65 years)). All but one participant were observed to use private speech during the problem-solving processes. The transcribed private speech utterances were then further classified into three categories, task-relevant, task-irrelevant and partially audible, according to Berk’s coding system (Berk, 1986). The result indicates that no clearly increasing developmental trend of global uncategorized private speech is evident. Nevertheless, relations between language abilities and the further categorized private speech data have shown that mean utterances per minute of both task-relevant and task-irrelevant private speech increased as a function of language abilities. However, the differences were not statistically significant. Unlike typically developing children, the children with ASD have shown more variation among individuals in private speech as their language abilities increased; the better their language abilities, the greater the private speech variation among them. The statistically insignificant finding might be partially due to the non-parallel developmental trajectories of ASD children's language and cognitive abilities, which in turn could cause problems in controlling task difficulty for each single individual. The other main finding was that, compared to their problem-solving counterparts, those who performed at a medium level were observed to express the greatest number of task-relevant private speech utterances per minute. And those with the worst task performance expressed the greatest number of task-irrelevant private speech utterances per minute. Conclusions/Implications: As it has been shown that task difficulty affects private speech behavior, one might need to control for both language abilities and individually tailored task difficulty in order to obtain a clear-cut picture of private speech development trends in ASD children. Our findings also imply that a well-designed private speech intervention program promoting the use of task-relevant private speech might be useful in improving ASD children’s performance on tasks involving executive function.