Academic Journal
Statistical learning in childhood: Dimensions, developmental trajectory, and relation with cognitive control.
| Τίτλος: | Statistical learning in childhood: Dimensions, developmental trajectory, and relation with cognitive control. |
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| Συγγραφείς: | Johnston M; School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom., Dolan J; School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom., Nemeth D; CNRS, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon CRNL U1028 UMR5292, INSERM, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Bron, France.; NAP Research Group, Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University and Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.; Gran Canaria Cognitive Research Center, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Atlántico Medio, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain., Chevalier N; School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. |
| Πηγή: | Child development [Child Dev] 2026 Jul 03; Vol. 97 (4), pp. 1068-1085. |
| Τύπος έκδοσης: | Journal Article |
| Γλώσσα: | English |
| Στοιχεία περιοδικού: | Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 0372725 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1467-8624 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00093920 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Child Dev Subsets: MEDLINE |
| Imprint Name(s): | Publication: Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers Original Publication: [Chicago, etc.] : Published by the University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development [etc.] |
| Ιατρικοί όροι (MeSH): | Child Development*/physiology , Executive Function*/physiology , Learning*/physiology , Probability Learning*, Humans ; Female ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Male |
| Περίληψη: | Compared to other developmental processes, such as cognitive control, there is relatively little consensus on the developmental trajectory of statistical learning (the ability to implicitly extract environmental regularities). The literature is further complicated as statistical learning may comprise distinct subtypes, differing in the regularities being tracked. Three statistical learning abilities and cognitive control were assessed in one hundred eighty-seven 5-12-year-olds (42.8% female, 84.6% White) at a university laboratory between March 2023 and August 2024. The ability to extract cue-based and nonadjacent statistics was age invariant, whereas adjacent dependency extraction yielded a greater benefit in younger than in older children. Despite research suggesting immature top-down guidance facilitates statistical learning, there was only weak evidence of an association with cognitive control, and the direction of these associations varied between "online" and "offline" measures of children's sensitivity to adjacent dependencies. Importantly, the different subtypes were uncorrelated, supporting the notion that statistical learning is multifaceted. (© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development.) |
| Competing Interests: | Conflicts of interest: There is no conflict of interest to declare. |
| Grant Information: | RPG-2021-235 Developmental dynamics between cognitive control and statistical learning |
| Contributed Indexing: | Keywords: cognitive control; developmental trajectory; implicit learning; statistical learning Local Abstract: [plain-language-summary] Young children are excellent learners and can pick up repeated patterns through mere exposure. For example, infants learn which syllables tend to go together in speech. We explored how this implicit learning ability, also known as “statistical learning,” changes throughout middle childhood. One hundred eighty-seven 5–12-year-olds completed computerized tasks assessing learning of three types of statistical regularities. Children showed no age differences in learning cue-based patterns (i.e., when a cue indicates presence of something important in the environment) or complex patterns when certain events occur more often than others. However, older children were somewhat less sensitive than younger children to patterns of visual shapes appearing one after another. Importantly, performance across the three different tasks was unrelated, potentially suggesting that statistical learning has multiple different components. |
| Entry Date(s): | Date Created: 20260413 Date Completed: 20260703 Latest Revision: 20260703 |
| Update Code: | 20260704 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/chidev/aacag031 |
| PMID: | 41973827 |
| Βάση Δεδομένων: | MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1467-8624 |
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| DOI: | 10.1093/chidev/aacag031 |