Statistical Learning in Reading: Variability in Irrelevant Letters Helps Children Learn Phonics Skills

Keith S APFELBAUM; Eliot HAZELTINE; Bob MCMURRAY

doi:10.1037/a0029839

Back

Statistical Learning in Reading: Variability in Irrelevant Letters Helps Children Learn Phonics Skills

Journal article

Peer reviewed

Statistical Learning in Reading: Variability in Irrelevant Letters Helps Children Learn Phonics Skills

Keith S APFELBAUM, Eliot HAZELTINE and Bob MCMURRAY

Developmental psychology, Vol.49(7), pp.1348-1365

2013

DOI: 10.1037/a0029839

PMID: 22924367

View Online

Abstract

Early reading abilities are widely considered to derive in part from statistical learning of regularities between letters and sounds. Although there is substantial evidence from laboratory work to support this, how it occurs in the classroom setting has not been extensively explored; there are few investigations of how statistics among letters and sounds influence how children actually learn to read or what principles of statistical learning may improve learning. We examined 2 conflicting principles that may apply to learning grapheme-phoneme-correspondence (GPC) regularities for vowels: (a) variability in irrelevant units may help children derive invariant relationships and (b) similarity between words may force children to use a deeper analysis of lexical structure. We trained 224 first-grade students on a small set of GPC regularities for vowels, embedded in words with either high or low consonant similarity, and tested their generalization to novel tasks and words. Variability offered a consistent benefit over similarity for trained and new words in both trained and new tasks.

Child Development

Educational Psychology

Developmental Psychology

Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology

Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry

Psychology. Psychophysiology

Biological and medical sciences

Psychopedagogics. Didactics

Child

Details

Title: Subtitle: Statistical Learning in Reading: Variability in Irrelevant Letters Helps Children Learn Phonics Skills
Creators: Keith S APFELBAUM - University of Iowa, United States
Eliot HAZELTINE - University of Iowa, United States
Bob MCMURRAY - University of Iowa, United States
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Developmental psychology, Vol.49(7), pp.1348-1365
Publisher: American Psychological Association; Washington, DC
DOI: 10.1037/a0029839
PMID: 22924367
ISSN: 0012-1649
eISSN: 1939-0599
Grant note: name: National Science Foundation, award: BCS 1026794
Language: English
Date published: 2013
Academic Unit: Communication Sciences and Disorders; Linguistics; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Otolaryngology
Record Identifier: 9984070786302771

Metrics

16 Record Views

58 Times Cited - Web of Science

See more details