Schmalz Xenia, Treccani Barbara, Mulatti Claudio
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80336 Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, 38068 Rovereto, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2021 Aug 28;11(9):1143. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11091143.
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.
许多理论被提出来，认为发育性阅读障碍是由低水平的神经、认知或感知缺陷引起的。例如，统计学习是一种认知机制，它使学习者能够在一系列刺激中检测出概率模式，并将这种模式的知识推广到相似的刺激上。统计学习与阅读能力之间的联系是间接的，诸如对经常同时出现的字母的认知等中间技能，可能在因果关系上依赖于统计学习技能，进而导致阅读能力的个体差异。我们讨论了关于统计学习与阅读能力之间的联系实际意味着什么的理论问题，并回顾了存在这种缺陷的证据。然后我们描述并模拟了 “噪声链假说”，即在一个假定的原因与阅读能力的最终状态之间的每个中间环节，都会降低低水平缺陷与阅读最终状态结果之间的相关系数。我们得出以下结论：（1）从经验上看，有证据表明统计学习能力与阅读能力之间存在相关性，但没有证据表明这种关系是因果关系；（2）从理论上讲，为了理解潜在过程，有必要关注远端原因与发育性阅读障碍之间完整的因果链，而不仅仅是远端原因和阅读能力这两个端点；（3）从统计学角度看，统计学习与阅读能力之间联系的间接性质意味着相关性的大小会被其他影响变量稀释，导致迄今为止的大多数研究功效不足；（4）从实际角度看，在教儿童阅读时引入统计学习概念能获得什么尚不清楚。
