Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:19:25.211Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Non-adjacent dependency learning in infants at familial risk of dyslexia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

ANNEMARIE KERKHOFF ,
ELISE DE BREE ,
MAARTJE DE KLERK  and
FRANK WIJNEN
ANNEMARIE KERKHOFF*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
ELISE DE BREE
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
MAARTJE DE KLERK
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
FRANK WIJNEN
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
*
Address for correspondence: Annemarie Kerkhoff, Utrecht University, Institute of Linguistics, Trans 10, Utrecht 3512 JK, Netherlands. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study tests the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia is (partly) caused by a deficit in implicit sequential learning, by investigating whether infants at familial risk of dyslexia can track non-adjacent dependencies in an artificial language. An implicit learning deficit would hinder detection of such dependencies, which mark grammatical relations (e.g. between ‘is’ and ‘-ing’ in ‘she is happily singing’). In a head-turn experiment with infants aged 1;6, family risk and typically developing infants were exposed to one of two novel languages containing dependencies of the type a-X-c, b-X-d or a-X-d, b-X-c, with fixed first and third elements and twenty-four different X elements. During test, typically developing children listened longer to ungrammatical strings (i.e. that did not correspond to their training language). However, family-risk children did not discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical strings, indicating deficient implicit learning. The implications of these findings in relation to dyslexia and other language-based disorders are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 40 , Special Issue 1: Atypical development , January 2013 , pp. 11 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

We thank Eline van Baal, Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Desiree Capel, Laura Geurts, Rebecca Gómez, Britt Hakvoort, Sophie de Koning and Theo Veenker for their diverse contributions to this study. This research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), grant nr. 360-70-270.

References

REFERENCES

Archibald, L. M. D. & Alloway, T. P. (2008). Comparing language profiles: Children with specific language impairment and developmental coordination disorder. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 43, 165–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bennett, I. J., Romano, J. C., Howard, J. H. Jr. & Howard, D. V. (2008). Two forms of implicit learning in young adults with dyslexia. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1145, 184–98.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., McDonald, D., Bird, S. & Hayiou-Thomas, M. E. (2009). Children who read words accurately despite language impairment: Who are they and how do they do it? Child Development 80, 593–605.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M. & Snowling, M. J. (2004). Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: Same or different? Psychological Bulletin 130, 858–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brus, B. Th. & Voeten, M. J. M. (1972). Een-Minuut-Test. Vorm A en B [One minute Test]. Nijmegen: Berkhout Testmateriaal.Google Scholar
Chaix, Y., Albaret, J., Brassard, C., Cheuret, E., de Castelnau, P., Benesteau, J., Karsenty, C. & Démonet, J. F. (2007). Motor impairment in dyslexia: The influence of attention disorders. European Journal of Paediatric Neurology 11, 368–74.Google Scholar
Cleeremans, A., Destrebecqz, A. & Boyer, M. (1998). Implicit learning: News from the front. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2, 406–416.Google Scholar
de Bree, E., Wijnen, F. & Gerrits, E. (2010). Non-word repetition and literacy in Dutch children at-risk of dyslexia and children with SLI: Results of the follow-up study. Dyslexia 16, 36–44.Google Scholar
Eckert, M. A., Leonard, C. M., Richards, T. L., Aylward, E. H., Thomson, J. & Berninger, V. W. (2003). Anatomical correlates of dyslexia: Frontal and cerebellar findings. Brain 126, 482–94.Google Scholar
Evans, J. L., Saffran, J. R. & Robe-Torres, K. (2009). Statistical learning in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52, 321–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferman, S. & Karni, A. (2010). No childhood advantage in the acquisition of skill in using an artificial language rule. PLoS ONE 5, e13648.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fletcher, J. M., Maybery, M. T. & Bennett, S. (2000). Implicit learning differences: A question of developmental level? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 26, 246–52.Google ScholarPubMed
Gabriel, A., Maillart, C., Guillaume, M., Stefaniak, N. & Meulemans, T. (2011). Exploration of serial structure procedural learning in children with language impairment. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 17, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerken, L., Wilson, R. & Lewis, W. (2005). Infants can use distributional cues to form syntactic categories. Journal of Child Language 32, 249–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gómez, R. L. (2002). Variability and detection of invariant structure. Psychological Science 13, 431–36.Google Scholar
Gómez, R. L. & Lakusta, L. (2004). A first step in form-based category abstraction by 12-month-old infants. Developmental Science 7, 567–80.Google Scholar
Gómez, R. L. & Maye, J. (2005). The developmental trajectory of nonadjacent dependency learning. Infancy 7, 183–206.Google Scholar
Grunow, H., Spaulding, T. J., Gómez, R. L. & Plante, E. (2006). The effects of variation on learning word order rules by adults with and without language-based learning disabilities. Journal of Communication Disorders 39, 158–70.Google Scholar
Höhle, B., Schmitz, M., Santelmann, L. M. & Weissenborn, J. (2006). The recognition of discontinuous verbal dependencies by German 19-month-olds: Evidence for lexical and structural influences on children's early processing capacities. Language Learning and Development 2, 277–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, J. H. Jr., Howard, D. V., Japikse, K. C. & Eden, G. F. (2006). Dyslexics are impaired on implicit higher-order sequence learning, but not on implicit spatial context learning. Neuropsychologia 44, 1131–44.Google Scholar
Hsu, H. J. & Bishop, D. V. M. (2010). Grammatical difficulties in children with Specific Language Impairment: Is learning deficient? Human Development 53, 264–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsu, H. J., Tomblin, J. B. & Christiansen, M. H. (2008). The effect of variability in learning nonadjacent dependencies in typically-developing individuals and individuals with language impairments. Paper presented at the XI International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), Edinburgh, 28 July to 1 August.Google Scholar
Jiménez-Fernández, G., Vaquero, J. M. M., Jiménez, L. & Defior, S. (2011). Dyslexic children show deficits in implicit sequence learning, but not in explicit sequence learning or contextual cueing. Annals of Dyslexia 61, 85–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Joanisse, M. F., Manis, F. R., Keating, P. & Seidenberg, M. S. (2000). Language deficits in dyslexic children: Speech perception, phonology, and morphology. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 77, 30–60.Google Scholar
Kelly, S. W., Griffiths, S. & Frith, U. (2002). Evidence for implicit sequence learning in dyslexia. Dyslexia 8, 43–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kemler-Nelson, D. G., Jusczyk, P. W., Mandel, D. R., Myers, J., Turk, A. & Gerken, L. (1995). The Head-turn Preference Procedure for testing auditory perception. Infant Behavior and Development 18, 111–16.Google Scholar
Kerkhoff, A., Erkelens, M., de Bree, E., de Klerk, M. & Wijnen, F. (2010). Dutch 16-month-olds use frequent morpheme frames to categorize novel words. Poster presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Baltimore, 10–14 March.Google Scholar
Lum, J. A. G., Gelgec, C. & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2010). Procedural and declarative memory in children with and without specific language impairment. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 45, 96–107.Google Scholar
Lyytinen, P., Poikkeus, A. M., Laakso, M. L., Eklund, K. & Lyytinen, H. (2001). Language development and symbolic play in children with and without familial risk for dyslexia. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 44, 873–85.Google Scholar
Maye, J., Werker, J. F. & Gerken, L. (2002). Infant sensitivity to distributional information can affect phonetic discrimination. Cognition 82, B101–B111.Google Scholar
McArthur, G. M., Hogben, J. H., Edwards, V. T., Heath, S. M. & Mengler, E. D. (2000). On the ‘specifics’ of specific reading disability and specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 41, 869–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menghini, D., Hagberg, G. E., Caltagirone, C., Petrosini, L. & Vicari, S. (2006). Implicit learning deficits in dyslexic adults: An fMRI study. NeuroImage 33, 1218–26.Google Scholar
Mintz, T. H. (2003). Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech. Cognition 90, 91–117.Google Scholar
Mintz, T. H. (2006). Finding the verbs: Distributional cues to categories available to young learners. In Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M. (eds), Action meets word: How children learn verbs, 31–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nicolson, R. I. & Fawcett, A. J. (2007). Procedural learning difficulties: Reuniting the developmental disorders? Trends in Neurosciences 30, 135–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pavlidou, E. V., Kelly, M. L. & Williams, J. M. (2010). Do children with developmental dyslexia have impairments in implicit learning? Dyslexia 16, 143–61.Google Scholar
Pennington, B. F. (2009). Diagnosing learning disorders: A neuropsychological framework. New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Plante, E., Gómez, R. & Gerken, L. (2002). Sensitivity to word order cues by normal and language/learning disabled adults. Journal of Communication Disorders 35, 453–62.Google Scholar
Ramus, F. & Szenkovits, G. (2008). What phonological deficit? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 61, 129–41.Google Scholar
Rispens, J. & Been, P. (2007). Subject–verb agreement and phonological processing in developmental dyslexia and SLI: A closer look. International Journal of Communication Disorders 42, 293–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rüsseler, J., Gerth, I. & Münte, T. (2006). Implicit learning is intact in adult developmental dyslexic readers: Evidence from the serial reaction time task and artificial grammar learning. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 28, 808–827.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Santelmann, L. M. & Jusczyk, P. W. (1998). Sensitivity to discontinuous dependencies in language learners: Evidence for limitations in processing space. Cognition 69, 105–134.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1990). Very early language deficits in dyslexic children. Child Development 61, 1728–43.Google Scholar
Snowling, M. J. (2000). Dyslexia. Oxford: Blackwell.Google ScholarPubMed
Snowling, M. J., Gallagher, A. & Frith, U. (2003). Family risk of dyslexia is continuous: Individual differences in the precursors of reading skill. Child Development 7, 358–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperling, J., Lu, Z. L. & Manis, F. R. (2004). Slower implicit categorical learning in adult poor readers. Annals of Dyslexia 54, 281–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stoodley, C. J., Harrison, E. P. D. & Stein, J. F. (2006). Implicit motor learning deficits in dyslexic adults. Neuropsychologia 44, 795–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomblin, J. B., Mainela-Arnold, E. & Zhang, X. (2007). Procedural learning in adolescents with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language Learning and Development 3, 269–93.Google Scholar
Toro, J. M., Sinnet, S. & Soto-Faraco, S. (2005). Speech segmentation by statistical learning depends on attention. Cognition 97, B25–B34.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T. & Pierpont, E. I. (2005). Specific Language Impairment is not specific to language: The procedural deficit hypothesis. Cortex 41, 399–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uterwijk, J. (2000). WAIS-III Nederlandstalige bewerking. Technische handleiding [WAIS-III Dutch version. Technical manual]. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.Google Scholar
van Alphen, P., de Bree, E., de Jong, J., Gerrits, E., Wilsenach, C. & Wijnen, F. (2004). Early language development in children with a genetic risk of dyslexia. Dyslexia 10, 265–88.Google Scholar
van den Bos, K. P., Lutje Spelberg, H. C., Scheepstra, A. J. M. & de Vries, J. R. (1994). De Klepel. Vorm A en B. Een test voor de leesvaardigheid van pseudowoorden [A test for the reading ability of pseudo-words]. Nijmegen: Berkhout Testmateriaal.Google Scholar
Vellutino, F. R., Fletcher, J. M., Snowling, M. J. & Scanlon, D. M. (2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia): What have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, 2–40.Google Scholar
Vicari, S., Finzi, A., Menghini, D., Marotta, L., Baldi, S. & Petrosini, L. (2005). Do children with developmental dyslexia have an implicit learning deficit? Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 76, 1392–97.Google Scholar
Vicari, S., Marotta, L., Menghini, D., Molinari, M. & Petrosini, L. (2003). Implicit learning deficit in children with developmental dyslexia. Neuropsychologia 41, 108–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilsenach, C. & Wijnen, F. (2004). Perceptual sensitivity to morphosyntactic agreement in language learners. Evidence from Dutch children at risk for developing dyslexia. In Brugos, A., Micciulla, L. & Smith, C. E. (eds), Proceedings of the 28th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 645–56. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Wimmer, H., Mayringer, H. & Raberger, T. (1999). Reading and dual-task balancing: Evidence against the automatization deficit explanation of developmental dyslexia. Journal of Learning Disabilities 32, 473–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yoshida, K. A., Pons, F., Cady, J. C. & Werker, J. F. (2006). Distributional learning and attention in phonological development. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS), Kyoto, 19–23 June.Google Scholar
Zink, I. & Lejaegere, M. (2002). N-CDIs: Lijsten voor communicatieve ontwikkeling [NCDIs: Lists for communicative development]. Leuven: Acco.Google Scholar