Flexibilité catégorielle chez des enfants scolarisés en ULIS : les effets d’un étayage métacognitif

Categorization is an essential cognitive process, but it seems deficient in children with intellectual disability. This study aimed to assess the improvement of categorization performances in children with intellectual disability by a metacognitive training. The specificity of the metacognitive training was tested by assessing two types of training, one metacognitive and the other not. The performances of categorical flexibility, that is to say, flexible use of categorization in 34 children with intellectual disability schooled in a special school (ULIS) were first evaluated. An intervention (metacognitive training, or training without metacognitive orientation, or no training) was then proposed one week later, followed by a second evaluation of the categorical flexibility performances. Furthermore, two versions of the categorical flexibility task were proposed so allowing the comparison of the use of perceptive categorization (shape and color) and semantic categorization (taxonomic and thematic). The results show that when the categorization requested are perceptive children with intellectual disability achieve performances at the ceiling level, contrary to the case of semantic categorization. Only children having benefited from a metacognitive training significantly increased their performances in semantic categorical flexibility task. These results show the possibility of training the semantic categorical flexibility in children with intellectual disability and suggest a possibility of transferring learning.