Abstract
Learning to read is a milestone in a child's life, and reading ability is a strong predictor of academic outcomes. Some studies have revealed that individual differences in the capacity for implicit statistical learning are linked with children's reading skills in English, which has a deep orthography, but we do not know whether the same relation is found in semi-transparent orthographies such as Norwegian. Additionally, the relative contribution of statistical learning alongside other cognitive measures known to be related to reading has not been examined. This study of sixty-five Norwegian school children (M = 10.3 years) found that performance on an independent statistical learning task predicted a small, but unique amount of variance in reading ability in Norwegian, even when a number of other reading-related cognitive skills were taken into account. This suggests that children's implicit learning of statistical regularities is associated with proficiency with written language in a semi-transparent orthography such as Norwegian.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 60-68 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Learning and Individual Differences |
Volume | 69 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2019 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Implicit learning
- Learning
- Literacy
- Reading acquisition
- Statistical learning