[PS-1.4] Implicit sequence learning in dyslexic children

Inácio, F. ¹ , Forkstam, C. ⁴ , Faísca, L. . ¹ & Petersson, K. M. . ^{1, 2, 3}

1 Center for Biomedical Research, University of Algarve, Portugal
2 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
4 LTH, University of Lund

There is conflicting evidence concerning the implicit learning abilities of dyslexic readers and the involvement of these abilities on reading deficits it is also not clear. The present study investigated the implicit sequence learning abilities of dyslexic children using an artificial grammar learning task. Twenty children with developmental dyslexia and two control groups - one matched for age and other for reading skills - participated in the study. After three acquisition days where participants were exposed to symbols sequences with an underlying grammatical structure, subjects were tested in a grammaticality classification task. Results show that dyslexic children learn the implicit sequences at the same level as the control groups, suggesting that implicit sequence learning is present in dyslexic children and it could be exploited in remediation programs.