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Atypical predictive processing during visual statistical learning in children with developmental dyslexia: an event-related potential study

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Abstract

Previous research suggests that individuals with developmental dyslexia perform below typical readers on non-linguistic cognitive tasks involving the learning and encoding of statistical-sequential patterns. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such a deficit have not been well examined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of sequence processing in a sample of children diagnosed with dyslexia using a non-linguistic visual statistical learning paradigm. Whereas the response time data suggested that both typical and atypical readers learned the statistical patterns embedded in the task, the ERP data suggested otherwise. Specifically, ERPs of the typically developing children (n = 12) showed a P300-like response indicative of learning, whereas the children diagnosed with a reading disorder (n = 8) showed no such ERP effects. These results may be due to intact implicit motor learning in the children with dyslexia but delayed attention-dependent predictive processing. These findings are consistent with other evidence suggesting that differences in statistical learning ability might underlie some of the reading deficits observed in developmental dyslexia.

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Funding

Research reported in this manuscript was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Insitutes of Health under aware number R01DC012037. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 5010, Atlanta, GA, 30302, USA

    Sonia Singh & Christopher M. Conway

  2. Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois, 405 N. 900 S. Goodwin Ave, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Anne M. Walk

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Correspondence to Sonia Singh.

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Singh, S., Walk, A.M. & Conway, C.M. Atypical predictive processing during visual statistical learning in children with developmental dyslexia: an event-related potential study. Ann. of Dyslexia 68, 165–179 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-018-0161-2

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