NSF/SBE-BSF: Trajectories of acquisition, consolidation and retention in incidental auditory category learning

据估计，43%的美国人的阅读水平达到或低于进行简单日常活动所需的基本技能水平。这导致了广泛的社会经济问题，包括劳动力参与率下降，对公共援助的依赖增加，子女的结果较差，以及公民参与度较低。据估计，由于失业、生产率下降和犯罪，这每年给美国造成的税收损失超过2550亿美元。迫切需要了解学习阅读所涉及的基本认知基础，以便改善社会中个人的福祉和提高经济竞争力。本项目将奠定必要的科学基础，以促进对这种学习如何在儿童时期和成年后发展的理解。研究小组发现，发育性阅读障碍的阅读障碍与语音习得之间存在联系，语音习得是学习阅读的一个基本方面。在此基础上，该项目将促进对这种学习与数学、认知和语言技能相关的发展过程的理解。这项研究将推进口语和书面语的理论模型，并将支持以证据为基础的方法来提高美国人的阅读水平。该项目的广泛影响因其对发育性阅读障碍的影响而得到加强，发育性阅读障碍是一种常见的发育障碍，影响着大约7%的人口。研究小组还将积极向公众宣传他们的科学发现，以促进社区对STEM的识字。另一个结果将是培养一批不同的研究生和本科生科学家。我们还没有充分了解支持阅读学习的认知和感知机制，或者它们如何在糟糕的读者中步履蹒跚。我们确实知道，低识字率并不是学习书面语言的孤立限制。相反，它与各种各样的学习挑战有关，广泛地延伸到语言的其他方面，甚至视觉和运动学习。在此背景下，本项目的核心假设是，领域通用程序性学习有助于发展健壮的音素类别，并有助于识字能力的获得。研究小组之前的工作证实，成年人阅读技能较差与非语言听觉类别的附带学习较差有关。本研究的目的是描述程序性听觉范畴学习的特点及其与阅读技能发展的关系。该项目涉及一个拥有交叉专业知识的美国-以色列两国研究小组，以考察程序性听觉类别学习：(1)从幼儿到成年，以了解扫盲获得和记忆系统成熟的早期和后期阶段；(2)与发展语言、认知和数学能力以及个体差异有关；(3)英语和希伯来语，其扫盲需求是不同的；(4)以发展性诵读困难的儿童和成人的程序性学习障碍为背景；(5)跨线下学习，以巩固和保持学习为特征。总而言之，该项目试图对程序性听觉范畴学习进行一次全面的检验。它将促进对扫盲基本组成部分的理解，有可能改变该领域的研究和理论，并推动以证据为基础的方法来解决美国的低识字率问题。该项目得到了国家科学基金会和美国-以色列双国科学基金会之间的合作伙伴关系的支持。

An estimated 43% of Americans read at or below a basic level of skill necessary to perform simple and everyday activities. This leads to widespread social-economic problems including lower participation in the labor force, heightened reliance on public assistance, poorer outcomes among offspring, and lower civic involvement. It is estimated that this costs the US more than $255 billion annually in lost tax revenue due to unemployment, lowered productivity, and crime. There is a critical need to understand the fundamental cognitive building blocks involved in learning to read, in order to improve the well-being of individuals in society and to improve economic competitiveness. The present project will lay the necessary scientific groundwork to advance understanding of how this learning develops across childhood and into young adulthood. The research team has discovered a connection between poor reading in developmental dyslexia and phonetic acquisition, a foundational aspect of learning to read. Building from this, the project will advance understanding of the developmental course of this learning in relation to mathematical, cognitive and language skills. The research will advance theoretical models of spoken and written language and will support evidence-based approaches to improving the level at which Americans read. The project's broader impact is enhanced by its implications for developmental dyslexia, a common developmental disorder that affects approximately 7% of the population. The research team will also be active in communicating their scientific discoveries to the public to promote STEM literacy in the community. An additional outcome will be training a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate scientists.We do not yet adequately understand the cognitive and perceptual mechanisms that support learning to read, or how they may falter in poor readers. We do know that low literacy is not an isolated limitation in learning written language. Rather, it is associated with diverse learning challenges extending broadly to other aspects of language and even to visual and motor learning. In this context, the core hypothesis of the present project is that domain-general procedural learning supports development of robust phoneme categories, with associated benefits for literacy acquisition. The research team's prior work established that poorer reading skill among adults is associated with poor incidental learning of nonlinguistic auditory categories. The objective of the present project is to characterize procedural auditory category learning and its relationship to reading skill across development. The project involves a bi-national US-Israeli research team with cross-cutting expertise to examine procedural auditory category learning (1) from early childhood to young adulthood to capture earlier and later stages of literacy acquisition and maturation of memory systems; (2) in relation to developing language, cognitive and mathematical abilities, and individual differences; (3) in English and Hebrew, for which literacy demands are distinct; (4) in the context of procedural learning impairments of children and adults with developmental dyslexia; and (5) across periods of offline learning to characterize consolidation and retention of learning. In sum, the project attempts a comprehensive examination of procedural auditory category learning. It will advance understanding of the basic building blocks of literacy with the potential to transform research and theory in the field and to advance evidence-based approaches to addressing low literacy in the US.This project is being supported by a partnership between the National Science Foundation and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation.