Deficits in statistical leaning of auditory sequences among adults with dyslexia

Recently, it has been suggested that developmental dyslexia (DD) is related to deficits in general mechanisms of statistical learning (SL). The aim of the current study was to explore these relations using a nonlinguistic auditory artificial grammar learning (A-AGL) task. Most studies using AGL to explore the role of SL among readers with dyslexia used visual stimuli. The current study explored SL abilities among adults with DD using a nonlinguistic auditory task, because evidence suggests that SL is affected by the modality of stimuli. Forty-eight (21 DD and 27 typically developed [TD]) adults participated in two A-AGL tasks: implicit and explicit. The results showed a significant difference between the groups, as TD readers outperformed adults with DD. This difference in performance supports the SL deficit hypothesis among adults with dyslexia, although the causal relations between auditory SL and reading still require further examination. In addition, no difference was found between the implicit and explicit tasks, suggesting that unlike the visual AGL, participants with DD do not benefit from elevating attentional resources during A-AGL.