Project Summary A key component in the development of linguistic proficiency is the capacity to learn from the regularities present in the environment. This basic cognitive process enables the discovery of the words and grammatical relations present in speech, and also enables the identification of these structures in written text. While previous research has established key connections between statistical learning – the ability to learn from distributional patterns – and language skills in literate children, fewer studies have explored its contribution to language outcomes in speaking, pre-literate children, and how this connection changes as a function of reading development. The goal of the proposed research is to better understand how statistical learning impacts two fundamental precursors to literacy: spoken word recognition and letter identification, as well as their contribution to vocabulary and syntactic development. Over three sets of experiments, the proposed research will employ a cross-sectional, individual differences approach to studying linguistic development. Our specific aims are to: 1) track the development of auditory and visual statistical learning in pre-readers (children 4–6 years old) and early readers (children 6–8 years old), and 2) establish the contribution of individual differences in statistical learning in different modalities to online language processing and the development of native language proficiency. We will deploy a battery of cognitive tasks to gain a thorough understanding of the impact of statistical learning on burgeoning language skills. In addition, we will leverage eye-tracking (one of the grant’s main training goals) to develop novel tasks that can be used across-age groups to probe reading precursors, and how they inform general language outcomes.

Project Narrative The proposed research will impact public outcomes by pinpointing the factors that contribute to the development of language proficiency in young children. There are widespread individual differences in language skills across the US population. As many as 30 million Americans only have rudimentary literacy skills, which negatively affects their health, social, and general life outcomes (Kutner et al., 2007). Understanding the basic mechanisms that contribute to spoken and written language development will help better inform educational and remediation practices, in both typical and atypical populations. In addition, the tasks developed as a part of the research strategy may also be applied as diagnostic tools to identify children who may be at risk for language-related difficulties.