Not All Procedural Learning Tasks Are Difficult for Adults With Developmental Language Disorder.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Developmental Science

Background:

• Developmental language disorder (DLD) is associated with difficulties in statistical and artificial grammar learning.
• Two competing hypotheses explain these deficits: the procedural learning deficit hypothesis and the sequential pattern learning deficit hypothesis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To differentiate between the procedural learning deficit hypothesis and the sequential pattern learning deficit hypothesis.
• To investigate whether individuals with DLD can learn artificial grammars that rely on feature activation rather than sequential dependencies.

Main Methods:

• Adults with DLD and typical development (TD) were familiarized with artificial phonological grammars.
• Participants learned either a 'Family Resemblance' grammar (learnable via feature activation) or a control 'exclusive OR' grammar.
• Test items were rated for conformity to the familiarization grammar patterns.

Main Results:

• Both DLD and TD groups demonstrated robust learning of the Family Resemblance grammar.
• Neither group learned the control 'exclusive OR' grammar.
• The Family Resemblance grammar facilitated learning significantly more than the OR grammar for both groups.

Conclusions:

• Poor artificial grammar learning in DLD is linked to the implicit computation of sequential dependencies, not a general procedural learning deficit.
• Findings support the sequential pattern learning deficit hypothesis as an explanation for DLD-related learning impairments.