Implicit Sequence Learning in Hearing Children and Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants

Understanding what cognitive mechanisms contribute to successful language acquisition and development has remained an important but elusive goal of the psychological sciences. Current theories suggest that the ability to learn structured sequential patterns – i.e. ,”implicit” or “statistical” learning -may underlie language processing and development. In this paper, we investigate the role that implicit sequence learning plays in the development of spoken language skills in both normal-hearing children and deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). Both groups of children completed a novel implicit sequence learning task, which measured learning through improvement to immediate serial recall for statistically-consistent visual sequences. The children were also assessed on several measures of language processing and development, including an online sentence perception task. The results demonstrated two key findings. First, the deaf children with CIs showed disturbances in their implicit visual sequence learning abilities relative to the normal-hearing children. Second, in both groups of children, implicit learning was significantly correlated with measures of spoken language processing and development. These findings suggest that a period of auditory deprivation has secondary effects related to general sequencing deficits, and that individual differences in sequence learning are associated with the development of spoken language under both typical and atypical conditions.