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Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide

Many theories have been put forward that propose that developmental dyslexia is caused by low-level neural, cognitive, or perceptual deficits. For example, statistical learning is a cognitive mechanism that allows the learner to detect a probabilistic pattern in a stream of stimuli and to generalise...

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Autores principales: Schmalz, Xenia, Treccani, Barbara, Mulatti, Claudio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8472276/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34573165
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11091143
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author Schmalz, Xenia
Treccani, Barbara
Mulatti, Claudio
author_facet Schmalz, Xenia
Treccani, Barbara
Mulatti, Claudio
author_sort Schmalz, Xenia
collection PubMed
description Many theories have been put forward that propose that developmental dyslexia is caused by low-level neural, cognitive, or perceptual deficits. For example, statistical learning is a cognitive mechanism that allows the learner to detect a probabilistic pattern in a stream of stimuli and to generalise the knowledge of this pattern to similar stimuli. The link between statistical learning and reading ability is indirect, with intermediate skills, such as knowledge of frequently co-occurring letters, likely being causally dependent on statistical learning skills and, in turn, causing individual variation in reading ability. We discuss theoretical issues regarding what a link between statistical learning and reading ability actually means and review the evidence for such a deficit. We then describe and simulate the “noisy chain hypothesis”, where each intermediary link between a proposed cause and the end-state of reading ability reduces the correlation coefficient between the low-level deficit and the end-state outcome of reading. We draw the following conclusions: (1) Empirically, there is evidence for a correlation between statistical learning ability and reading ability, but there is no evidence to suggest that this relationship is causal, (2) theoretically, focussing on a complete causal chain between a distal cause and developmental dyslexia, rather than the two endpoints of the distal cause and reading ability only, is necessary for understanding the underlying processes, (3) statistically, the indirect nature of the link between statistical learning and reading ability means that the magnitude of the correlation is diluted by other influencing variables, yielding most studies to date underpowered, and (4) practically, it is unclear what can be gained from invoking the concept of statistical learning in teaching children to read.
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spelling pubmed-84722762021-09-28 Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide Schmalz, Xenia Treccani, Barbara Mulatti, Claudio Brain Sci Review Many theories have been put forward that propose that developmental dyslexia is caused by low-level neural, cognitive, or perceptual deficits. For example, statistical learning is a cognitive mechanism that allows the learner to detect a probabilistic pattern in a stream of stimuli and to generalise the knowledge of this pattern to similar stimuli. The link between statistical learning and reading ability is indirect, with intermediate skills, such as knowledge of frequently co-occurring letters, likely being causally dependent on statistical learning skills and, in turn, causing individual variation in reading ability. We discuss theoretical issues regarding what a link between statistical learning and reading ability actually means and review the evidence for such a deficit. We then describe and simulate the “noisy chain hypothesis”, where each intermediary link between a proposed cause and the end-state of reading ability reduces the correlation coefficient between the low-level deficit and the end-state outcome of reading. We draw the following conclusions: (1) Empirically, there is evidence for a correlation between statistical learning ability and reading ability, but there is no evidence to suggest that this relationship is causal, (2) theoretically, focussing on a complete causal chain between a distal cause and developmental dyslexia, rather than the two endpoints of the distal cause and reading ability only, is necessary for understanding the underlying processes, (3) statistically, the indirect nature of the link between statistical learning and reading ability means that the magnitude of the correlation is diluted by other influencing variables, yielding most studies to date underpowered, and (4) practically, it is unclear what can be gained from invoking the concept of statistical learning in teaching children to read. MDPI 2021-08-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8472276/ /pubmed/34573165 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11091143 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Schmalz, Xenia
Treccani, Barbara
Mulatti, Claudio
Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide
title Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide
title_full Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide
title_fullStr Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide
title_full_unstemmed Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide
title_short Developmental Dyslexia, Reading Acquisition, and Statistical Learning: A Sceptic’s Guide
title_sort developmental dyslexia, reading acquisition, and statistical learning: a sceptic’s guide
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8472276/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34573165
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11091143
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