Visual Statistical Learning Deficits in Children with Developmental Dyslexia: an Event Related Potential Study

Abstract

Extensive research suggests that individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) perform below typical readers on non-linguistic cognitive tasks involving the learning and encoding of statistical-sequential patterns. However, research investigating the neural mechanisms underlying such a deficit is inadequate. The aim of the present study was to investigate the ERP correlates of sequence processing in a sample of children diagnosed with DD using a probabilistic visual serial learning paradigm. Behavioral results revealed that whereas age-matched typically developing (TD) children (n=12) showed learning in the task as reflected by their reaction times, the children with dyslexia (n=8) showed no effects of learning. Additionally, ERPs of the TD children showed a P300-like response indicative of this paradigm (Jost et al., 2015); whereas, children diagnosed with a reading disorder showed no such ERP effects. These findings are consistent with the idea that differences in statistical-sequential learning ability might underlie the reading deficits observed in DD.


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