Statistical learning (SL) is the ability to recognize and extract patterns from environmental data, such as language structures and sound co-occurrences, accordingly, SL is crucial for language acquisition and reading skills. Zhou and colleagues studied the relationship between working memory (WM) and SL in children with developmental dyslexia (DD) and their typically developing (TD) peers. Data of this cross-sectional study were collected from 2014 to 2019, involving 651 Grade 1 to Grade 6 Chinese children from Hong Kong, among them 199 diagnosed with DD by a clinical or educational psychologist.
The study consisted of two experiments. First in the artificial orthography experiment, researchers used pseudocharacters with varying predictability levels (high, moderate, low) to assess the impact of working memory on distributional statistical learning. Participants studied 30 pseudocharacters in the learning phase. In the testing phase, they identified whether a pseudocharacter was previously shown in the learning phase.
The findings showed no significant overall difference in working memory’s association with SL between DD and TD children. Notably, the effect of WM on SL was weaker on recognizing moderate-predictable items compared to those of high-predictability or low-predictability. As age increased there was stronger positive effect of WM on recognition of familiar items (studied) in both groups. A negative association between WM and SL was found for unfamiliar items (non-studied), particularly among older children with DD.
Second, the visual triplet learning experiment involved a two-alternatives forced-choice task assessing conditional statistical learning through a sequence of visual triplets. After studying four triples of cartoons, children were required to identify the more familiar item between a familiar (studied) and an unfamiliar (not studied) triplet. Results indicated that children with DD showed a stronger effect of WM when recognizing sequences displayed as familiar-unfamiliar compared to unfamiliar-familiar items, while no such association was found in TD.
These findings highlight the complexity of the relationship between working memory and statistical learning, which varies according to the characteristics of the items and the specific type of statistical learning involved.
Source (Open Access): Zhou, M., Zhang, P., Mimeau, C., & Tong, S. X. (2024). Unraveling the complex interplay between statistical learning and working memory in Chinese children with and without dyslexia across different ages. Child Development, 95(5), e338–e351. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14121