| Chinese orthographic awareness is an individual’s awareness and recognition of the inner rules of Chinese character structure or Chinese grammar.A better orthographic awareness helps children to read and spell effectively.Current research indicates that the main weakness of children with developmental Chinese dyslexia is their poor awareness of Chinese orthography.As one of the forms of acquisition of individual Chinese orthographic awareness,statistical learning mainly refers to the acquisition of the inner rules of a large number of stimuli repeated in response to exposure,which shows a difficulty to some children with Chinese dyslexia.Statistical learning is closely related to reading,and children’s acquisition of orthographic awareness requires strong visual statistical learning skills.Current research on the relationship between the two has focused on the nonverbal domain of dyslexia,but little research has focused on the verbal domain.Second,there is no consensus on the reasons why Chinese developmental dyslexia children fall behind in statistical learning.According to previous studies,children with dyslexia fall behind the average children in several cognitive abilities such as working memory and inhibitory control,which are related to children’s statistical learning abilities.The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between statistical learning in the verbal domain and orthographic awareness through the statistical learning performance of Chinese orthographic regulations in Chinese developmental dyslexic children,and to further investigate the main cognitive abilities that influence orthographic statistical learning and the underlying mechanisms of effect.This study selects children with developmental dyslexia by using paper tests such as the Primary School Literacy Test,the Childhood Learning Disabilities Screening Scale,and the Raven Reasoning Intelligence Test combined with the opinions of classroom teachers and language teachers and children’s language scores on final examinations.Study 1 used an artificial grammar paradigm to measure statistical learning of Chinese orthographic rules in children in the DD and control TD groups.Study 2 used a visual matrix task and an inhibitory control task to measure visual working memory and inhibitory control in children with DD and TD.The results showed that(1)Chinese developmental dyslexic children performed worse than children in the normal developmental group on the orthographic rule statistical learning test,the visual working memory test,and the inhibitory control test.(2)Children’s statistical learning ability influenced the strength of orthographic awareness.(3)Visuospatial working memory influenced children’s statistical learning of Chinese orthography to a significant degree.(4)Inhibitory control did not directly affect orthographic statistical learning,and visual working memory acted as a mediating variable between inhibitory control and orthographic statistical learning.This study concludes that(1)statistical learning is the main form of orthographic awareness acquisition for Chinese developmental dyslexic children,and the learning mechanism is consistent with those of ordinary children.(2)The low inhibitory control of children with developmental dyslexia in Chinese leads to poor visual working memory,which influences the development of orthographic awareness,therefore causes reading difficulties. |