Relationships Between Auditory Statistical Learning and Reading Skills in Children with Reading Difficulties

Purpose. This study evaluated the psychometric implications of a novel gamified SL task for school-aged children with reading difficulties and examined the relationships between auditory syllable-based statistical learning (SL) and literacy skills.Methods. Two groups of children aged 7–11 with reading difficulty were recruited. In Experiment 1, 13 children piloted a child-friendly, non-gamified auditory SL task at two timepoints, with learning assessed via a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) test at both timepoints and a statistically induced chunking recall (SICR) test at Timepoint 2. In Experiment 2, 22 children completed a gamified version of the SL task, with learning assessed via 2AFC and SICR at both timepoints and reading skills (nonword and sight-word fluency) assessed at Timepoint 1.Results. Children showed learning at the group level across timepoints, as measured by SICR in both gamified and non-gamified tasks, and as measured by 2AFC in the gamified task only. SICR showed higher internal consistency than 2AFC across tasks. Test-retest reliability for 2AFC was higher for the gamified (r = .64) than non-gamified (r = .14) task. Children’s performance on 2AFC and SICR in the gamified task were significantly associated with their nonword and sight-word reading fluency.Conclusions. Gamification and the use of a statistically induced chunking recall task in an auditory SL task improved the task’s psychometric properties in school-aged children with reading difficulties. Auditory SL was also associated with concurrent reading skills in these children, suggesting that the implicit learning of regularities in spoken language input may additionally support reading development.