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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 24, 2026

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Published on: June 30, 2020

Statistical learning in children with specific language impairment.

Julia L Evans¹, Jenny R Saffran, Kathryn Robe-Torres

¹School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-1518, USA. jevans@mail.sdsu.edu

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR

|April 3, 2009

Summary

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) struggle with implicit statistical learning of sound sequences. This difficulty may underlie their language impairments, especially in auditory processing.

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Last Updated: Jun 24, 2026

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

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Making Sense of Listening: The IMAP Test Battery

Making Sense of Listening: The IMAP Test Battery

Published on: October 11, 2010

Area of Science:

Linguistics
Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

Specific language impairment (SLI) affects language development in children.
Understanding the cognitive underpinnings of SLI is crucial for effective interventions.
Implicit learning, the ability to learn without conscious awareness, is fundamental to language acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if children with SLI can implicitly compute sound sequence probabilities.
To determine if this ability is influenced by exposure duration and vocabulary.
To assess if implicit learning deficits in SLI are domain-specific or domain-general.

Main Methods:

Two studies were conducted with children with SLI and language-matched controls.
Participants listened to statistical learning tasks involving speech and tone languages with varying exposure times.
Performance was measured by comparing learning in SLI and control groups, correlated with vocabulary.

Main Results:

Children with SLI performed at chance after 21 minutes, unlike controls who showed significant learning correlated with vocabulary.
After 42 minutes of speech exposure, SLI performance improved but not in the tone condition.
Controls demonstrated significant learning in both speech and tone conditions.

Conclusions:

Poor implicit statistical learning may be a core deficit in specific language impairment.
This deficit might explain some language processing difficulties observed in children with SLI.
Findings highlight the role of implicit learning in language development.