The Role of Statistical Learning in Word Reading and Spelling Development: More Questions Than Answers

ABSTRACT

This special issue bundles a set of eight empirical studies and one review article that explore the role of statistical learning (SL) mechanisms (both domain-specific and domain-general) in supporting word reading and spelling development, and vice versa. In this introduction to the special issue, we worked to summarize the extent to which studies support our hypotheses relating SL to reading and spelling development while pointing out inconsistencies across studies that require us to refine and rethink our hypotheses.     

Action Learning: More Than Just A Task Force

Action learning, as it is often implemented in the U.S., differs little from a typical cross-functional task force. Those characteristics of action learning that originated with Reginald Revan's work and that have such potential to change both organizations and participants are often absent in the Americanized version of action learning. Outlined here are the principles that underlie Revan's work as well as an explanation of why they are so critical to both individual development and organizational problem resolution. These principles are then contrasted with a case study of a Fortune 500 company which implemented the more Americanized version. The benefits of that implementation are explored as well as a discussion of the learning difficulties the teams experienced.     

Statistical Learning and Spelling: Older Prephonological Spellers Produce More Wordlike Spellings Than Younger Prephonological Spellers

The authors analyzed the spellings of 179 U.S. children (age = 3 years, 2 months–5 years, 6 months) who were prephonological spellers, in that they wrote using letters that did not reflect the phonemes in the target items. Supporting the idea that children use their statistical learning skills to learn about the outer form of writing before they begin to spell phonologically, older prephonological spellers showed more knowledge about English letter patterns than did younger prephonological spellers. The written productions of older prephonological spellers were rated by adults as more similar to English words than were the productions of younger prephonological spellers. The older children s spellings were also more wordlike on several objective measures, including length, variability of letters within words, and digram frequency.     

Statistical and Cooperative Learning in Reading: An Artificial Orthography Learning Study

This article reports two experiments in which the artificial orthography paradigm was used to investigate the mechanisms underlying learning to read. In each experiment, participants were taught the meanings and pronunications of words written in an unfamiliar orthography, and the statistical structure of the mapping between written and spoken forms (O-P) was manipulated independently of the mapping between written forms and their meanings (O-S). Our results support three main conclusions. First, the statistical structure of O-P and O-S mappings determined how easily each of those mappings was learned, suggesting that the learning of both mappings engages a common statistical learning mechanism. Second, learning to read is a cooperative process, in that learning in any particular component of the reading system is influenced by knowledge stored in the rest of the system. Finally, knowledge of sublexical regularities can be acquired as the result of exposure to words embodying those regularities.     

Is Statistical Learning Ability Related to Reading Ability,and If So,Why?

ABSTRACT

Previous studies found a relationship between performance on statistical learning (SL) tasks and reading ability and developmental dyslexia. Thus, it has been suggested that the ability to implicitly learn patterns may be important for reading acquisition. Causal mechanisms behind this relationship are unclear: Although orthographic sensitivity to letter bigrams may emerge through SL and facilitate reading, there is no empirical support for this link. We test 84 adults on two SL tasks, reading tests, and a bigram sensitivity task. We test for correlations using Bayes factors. This serves to test the prediction that SL and reading ability are correlated and to explore sensitivity to bigram legality as a potential mediator. We find no correlations between SL tasks and reading ability, SL and bigram sensitivity, or between the SL tasks. We conclude that correlating SL with reading ability may not yield replicable results, partly due to low correlations between SL tasks.     

Seeing More Than Right and Wrong Answers: Prospective Teachers' Interpretations of Students' Mathematical Work

Listening to students' mathematical thinking is one of the trademarks of reform-minded visions of mathematics teaching. The questions of when, where, how, and what might help prospective teachers learn to do so,however, remain open. This study examines how a mathematics letter exchange with Grade 4 students provided an occasion for prospective teachers to learn about students' mathematical thinking and to examine their interpretive practices. Analysis of the interactions between students and prospective teachers, and of the reflective writing of the latter,revealed changes in the patterns of their interpretations. I characterized these as changes in the focus of interpretation, from correctness to meaning, and in the interpretive approach, from quick and conclusive to thoughtful and tentative. I also discuss factors associated with these interpretive turns. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reading and the Neurocognitive Bases of Statistical Learning

ABSTRACT

The processes underlying word reading are shaped by statistical properties of the writing system. According to some theoretical perspectives, reading acquisition should be understood as an exercise in statistical learning (SL). SL involves the extraction of organizing principles from a set of inputs. Several lines of research provide convergent evidence supporting the connection between SL and reading acquisition. An obstacle to fully appreciating the theoretical and educational implications of these findings is that SL is itself not well understood. In this article, we review the current literature on SL with a particular focus on organizing this literature by grounding it in theories of learning and memory more generally. This approach can clarify the nature of SL and provide a framework for understanding its role in reading, reading acquisition, and reading disorders.     

听觉障碍中学生汉语阅读辅助策略研究

本研究应用测验法探讨听觉障碍中学生在适宜水平和较难的材料阅读中,使用问题辅助阅读、图示辅助阅读、标记辅助阅读以及提纲辅助阅读策略对阅读效果的影响。研究结果表明:听觉障碍中学生在适宜难度材料阅读中问题辅助阅读、图示辅助阅读成绩较好;在较难材料阅读中提纲辅助阅读、标记辅助阅读的效果较好;使用不同的阅读策略时年级因素、难度因素以及性别因素部分表现出主效应显著和交互作用明显。本研究结果对提高阅读效率,指导学校和家庭选择适合听觉障碍儿童的阅读材料、教学方法和学习方法具有现实意义。     

Cognitive Prerequisites for Generative Learning: Why Some Learning Strategies Are More Effective Than Others

This study examined age-related differences in the effectiveness of two generative learning strategies (GLSs). Twenty-five children aged 9–11 and 25 university students aged 17–29 performed a facts learning task in which they had to generate either a prediction or an example before seeing the correct result. We found a significant Age × Learning Strategy interaction, with children remembering more facts after generating predictions rather than examples, whereas both strategies were similarly effective in adults. Pupillary data indicated that predictions stimulated surprise, whereas the effectiveness of example-based learning correlated with children’s analogical reasoning abilities. These findings suggest that there are different cognitive prerequisites for different GLSs, which results in varying degrees of strategy effectiveness by age.     

Statistical Learning,Letter Reversals,and Reading

Reversal errors play a prominent role in theories of reading disability. We examined reversal errors in the writing of letters by 5- to 6-year-old children. Of the 130 children, 92 had a history of difficulty in producing speech sounds, a risk factor for reading problems. Children were more likely to reverse letter forms that face left, such as <d> and <J>, than forms that face right, such as <b> and <C>. We propose that this asymmetry reflects statistical learning: Children implicitly learn that the right-facing pattern is more typical of Latin letters. The degree of asymmetry that a child showed was not related to the child’s reading skill at Time 2, 2¾ years later. Although children who went on to become poorer readers made more errors in the letter writing task than children who went on to become better readers, they were no more likely to make reversal errors.     

聋校语文教学问题分析及对策

目前,我国的聋人教育越来越受到重视,但聋人对现代汉语的学习和运用仍难尽如人意。针对聋校语文教育中存在的诸多问题,可以从四个方面提高聋生的语言能力:第一,正确认识聋人学习现代汉语的能力;第二,合理开展双语教学,促进手语和书面语转化;第三,加强阅读写作,内化语法规则;第四,拓展语言环境,强化书面语的运用能力。     

阅读策略与大学英语阅读能力的提高

以认知理论为依据，在分析了阅读策略等的基础上，探讨了如何提高学生的阅读能力，提出了适合于现代英语阅读教学的新思路。     

对阅读教学中培养学生自主学习能力的研究

新的课程理念提倡学生是语文学习的主人。因此,我们语文教师,应改变教学方式,尊重学生的个体差异,采用多种教学手段,大胆尝试,积极探索,培养学生的自主学习能力,逐步使学生的自主学习能力达到"自读自悟"的最佳境界。     

视听课的交互模式

在分析视听课的传统模式的基础上,提出视听课的交互模式。     

Statistical Learning of Speech Sounds in Dyslexic and Typical Reading Children

ABSTRACT

Statistical learning has been proposed to underlie the developmental transition during infancy from allophonic to phonemic speech sound perception. Based on this, it can be hypothesized that in dyslexic individuals, core phonemic representation deficits arise from reduced sensitivity to the statistical distribution of sounds. This study aims to investigate (a) whether statistical learning contributes to the construction of phonemic representations in typical readers, and (b) whether deficits in statistical learning underlie dyslexia. Fifty-eight children performed an identification task of a non-native phonetic contrast, before and after exposure to the sounds of the continuum. Our results suggest that the statistical distribution of the presented sounds implicitly enhanced the formation of phonemic representations and that dyslexic readers make less use of the statistical cues embedded in oral language, resulting in less distinct phonemic categories and thus a higher risk for failing to establish robust connections between these and written language.     

自主学习能力提升视域下的大学英语阅读教学模式研究

根据当前大学生的自主学习能力情况,本文提出了一种自主学习能力提升视域下的大学英语阅读教学模式,该模式把自主学习能力培训、英语阅读策略培训和课上与课外练习三个模块结合起来,以此提高学生的英语阅读能力,进而提高大学英语的教学质量。     

Portfolio Assessment: More Than ABCs and 123s

Demands for educational accountability are being called for at all levels: preschool through graduate school. Standardized tests are being widely utilized, but this measurement is not appropriate for young children. Portfolio assessment is a more promising approach to measure children's growth, development, and achievement. This paper outlines criteria that portfolios must have in order to be effective assessment tools. Methods of gathering information and tips for portfolio development are shared and several examples of children's work samples are included     

合理删词完形填空与阅读能力的关系研究

通过采用定量研究法对74名非英语专业学生对合理删词完形填空与阅读能力之间的关系进行研究发现:合理删词完形填空与阅读理解有显著的相关关系,这一关系是预测学生阅读能力的一种有效手段。合理删词完形填空是一种很好的测试题,有助于考查学生对语言的综合运用能力。