Is there such a thing as a ‘good statistical learner’?

Abstract

Available online 19 November 2021A growing body of research investigates individual differences in the learning of statistical structure, tying them to variability in cognitive (dis)abilities. This approach views statistical learning (SL) as a general individual ability that underlies performance across a range of cognitive domains. But is there a general SL capacity that can sort individuals from ‘bad’ to ‘good’ statistical learners? Explicating the suppositions underlying this approach, we suggest that current evidence supporting it is meager. We outline an alternative perspective that considers the variability of statistical environments within different cognitive domains. Once we focus on learning that is tuned to the statistics of real-world sensory inputs, an alternative view of SL computations emerges with a radically different outlook for SL research.This article was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant Project 692502-L2STAT and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) Grant Project 705/20, awarded to R.F. L.B. received funding from the ERC Advanced Grant Project 833029-LEARNATTEND. N.S. received funding from the ISF, grant number 48/2