Statistical Learning of Orthographic Regularities in Chinese Children With and Without Dyslexia

This study examined distributional statistical learning of positional, phonetic, and semantic regularities of an artificial orthography in Chinese children aged 8-10 years: 29 with dyslexia, 29 age-matched controls, and 30 reading-level matched controls. Despite having positional regularity learning performance comparable to the controls, the children with dyslexia were poorer at learning left-right structured characters than top-bottom structured characters in high- and low-consistency conditions. Moreover, they showed difficulties in mapping a given sound or meaning to a specific character compared with the typically developing controls. These findings suggest that children with dyslexia have deficits in some, though not all, aspects of statistical learning of character orthography, which may reflect their difficulties in coping with distractors and inconsistency of orthographic input.