Gabay Yafit, Thiessen Erik D, Holt Lori L
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2015 Jun;58(3):934-45. doi: 10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-14-0324.
Developmental dyslexia (DD) is commonly thought to arise from phonological impairments. However, an emerging perspective is that a more general procedural learning deficit, not specific to phonological processing, may underlie DD. The current study examined if individuals with DD are capable of extracting statistical regularities across sequences of passively experienced speech and nonspeech sounds. Such statistical learning is believed to be domain-general, to draw upon procedural learning systems, and to relate to language outcomes.
DD and control groups were familiarized with a continuous stream of syllables or sine-wave tones, the ordering of which was defined by high or low transitional probabilities across adjacent stimulus pairs. Participants subsequently judged two 3-stimulus test items with either high or low statistical coherence as being the most similar to the sounds heard during familiarization.
As with control participants, the DD group was sensitive to the transitional probability structure of the familiarization materials as evidenced by above-chance performance. However, the performance of participants with DD was significantly poorer than controls across linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. In addition, reading-related measures were significantly correlated with statistical learning performance of both speech and nonspeech material.
Results are discussed in light of procedural learning impairments among participants with DD.
发育性阅读障碍（DD）通常被认为源于语音损伤。然而，一种新出现的观点认为，一种更普遍的程序性学习缺陷（并非特定于语音处理）可能是DD的潜在原因。当前研究考察了患有DD的个体是否能够从被动体验的语音和非语音声音序列中提取统计规律。这种统计学习被认为是领域通用的，依赖于程序性学习系统，并且与语言结果相关。
DD组和对照组熟悉一连串的音节或正弦波音调，其顺序由相邻刺激对之间的高或低过渡概率定义。参与者随后判断两个具有高或低统计连贯性的三刺激测试项目中哪一个与熟悉过程中听到的声音最相似。
与对照组参与者一样，DD组对熟悉材料的过渡概率结构敏感，表现高于机会水平即为证明。然而，患有DD的参与者在语言和非语言刺激方面的表现明显比对照组差。此外，与阅读相关的指标与语音和非语音材料的统计学习表现显著相关。
根据患有DD的参与者的程序性学习损伤对结果进行了讨论。
