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ISSN : 1229-0718
본 연구에서는 언어가 틀린 믿음 수행을 예측해 주는지를 밝히기 위해 14명의 자폐 아동을 대상으로 실험을 실시하였다. 언어 능력은 마음상태 동사(생각하다)를 포함하는 보문, 의사소통 동사(말하다)를 포함하는 보문, 관계절 문장에 대한 이해를 측정하였고, 틀린 믿음 이해는 틀린 믿음 위치 과제와 내용 과제를 사용하여 측정하였다. 틀린 믿음 수행을 종속변인으로 삼고 마음상태 보문 이해, 의사소통 보문 이해, 관계절 이해를 예측 변인으로 하여 위계적 회귀분석을 실시하였다. 그 결과 마음상태 동사를 포함하는 보문에 대한 이해가 틀린 믿음 수행을 예측해 주었지만, 의사소통 동사를 포함하는 보문이나 관계절 문장에 대한 이해는 틀린 믿음 수행을 예측해 주지 못했다. 이러한 결과는 보문과 같은 특정한 구조에 대한 이해가 틀린 믿음 이해와 관련된다는 입장을 지지해준다 하겠다. 특히 마음상태를 표현하는 동사를 포함하는 보문만이 틀린 믿음 수행을 예측해 주었다는 점은 선행 연구 결과와 비교하여 논의할 필요가 있을 것이다. 또한 본 연구에 참여한 자폐 아동들의 틀린 믿음 과제에서의 수행은 정상 아동보다 저조하였는데, 이러한 결과는 자폐증의 마음이론 가설을 지지해 주는 것으로 해석될 수 있을 것이다.
This study examined the relationship between language and false belief in Korean children with autism (n=14). Specifically, it aimed to explore whether understanding of sentential complement structures could predict performance on false belief tasks in Korean children with autism. The children were tested with two kinds of false belief tasks (i.e., location change and content change tasks) and three kinds of language tasks (i.e., complement structure with a mental verb (think), complement structures with a communication verb (say), and relative clause structures). The tasks were presented as short stories with picture descriptions on a laptop computer. Questions were asked after each short story presentation. The data showed that the Korean children with autism performed lower than the typically developing Korean children did. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses indicated that the understanding of complement structures with a mental verb (think) predicted false belief task performance. But understanding of complement structures with a communication verb (say) and the relative clause comprehension were not predictive. The results support the view of de Villiers that false belief task performance is preceded by understanding of sentential complement structure. The lower performance of the Korean autistic children can also be interpreted as evidence that supports Baron-Cohen's theory of mind deficit hypothesis of autism.
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