Chinese dyslexic's statistical learning and orthographic regularity learning

Abstract

The current study investigated the link between statistical learning and orthographic regularity learning in Chinese children with dyslexia. Tasks of statistical learning and orthographic regularity learning were administered to17 clinically diagnosed dyslexics (mean age7 years and 6 months) and 24 age-matched controls (mean age 7 years and 7 months). Visual statistical learning was tested using a triplet learning paradigm in which participants had to detect and extract the temporal order of stimuli. Orthographic regularity learning was tested with an orthographic regularity pattern elicitation paradigm, in which participants were asked to invent orthographically legal pseudo-character with pairs of stroke patterns. A t-test comparison revealed that Chinese children with dyslexia had significantly poorer performance than controls in both orthographic regularity learning task and statistical learning task. Moreover, there was significant correlation between performance in orthographic regularity task and statistical learning task. For the first time, these results provide evidence that Chinese dyslexics have statistical learning difficulties, and such statistical learning deficit may be associated with their difficulties in orthographic regularity learning.