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This thesis explores implicit learning in children with developmental dyslexia. While specific cognitive abilities such as phonology and memory have been extensively explored in developmental dyslexia more global, fundamental abilities are rarely studied. A literature review is reported, which indicates that there is a gap in the study of more generic abilities highlighting at the same time, the need of investigating developmental dyslexia in the kind of contemporary context that learning literature provides. Implicit learning seems a suitable paradigm case to explore global abilities in developmental dyslexia since there have been suggestions that learning becomes more implicit in nature after explicit instruction. Based on the proposed relationship between implicit learning and reading, it is argued that impairments in the mechanisms of implicit learning could mediate selective weaknesses in reading performance in developmental dyslexia. The present thesis tests this argument in a series of three studies that are composed of five linked experiments. Together the three studies reported in the present thesis provide evidence for the implicit learning abilities in children with and without developmental dyslexia. The results suggest that while implicit learning abilities are found intact in typically developing children, children with developmental dyslexia on the other hand, might be facing an implicit learning deficit that could affect their reading performance and inhibit them from reaching their full learning potential.

Previous research on speakers' abilities to track non-adjacent dependencies (e.g., vowels or consonants that co-occur across syllables) in artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks has shown that the acquisition of these patterns is extremely difficult (e.g. Newport&Aslin 2004; Gómez 2002; Bonatti, PenÞa, Nespor&Mehler 2005). One assumption made in this literature is that all speakers of all languages should be capable of tracking these patterns even when the native language of those speakers contains no such non-adjacent dependencies. This dissertation questions this assumption by testing whether native Khalkha Mongolian speakers attend to and track the frequency of vowel patterns and harmonic class size in their language. It also tests their ability to acquire non-adjacent vocalic dependencies in AGL tasks.Because Khalkha displays [ATR] vowel harmony (Svantesson, Tsendina, Karlsson&Franzén 2005) which restricts vowel co-occurrences, it was hypothesized that Khalkha speakers are biased towards attending to the frequency and form with which these vowel patterns occur. The results of three experiments indicated that Khalkha speakers both attend to and track the frequency with which vowel patterns occur. These results also indicate that Khalkha speakers build abstract categories based on the relative token numbers of [+ATR] and [-ATR]harmonic spans.Khalkha speakers were further tested in three experiments which focused on speakers' ability to acquire novel non-adjacent vocalic dependencies in AGL tasks. The results indicated that participants successfully acquired vocalic dependencies (both harmonic and disharmonic) in all three experiments. These results indicate that Khalkha speakers' attention is biased towards vowels, regardless of harmonic status of the item.Collectively, these results highlight the role of language-specific phonology in the ways that speakers abstract and utilize phonological information. The special status of harmonic vowel patterns and harmonic class size are new variables with which to conduct future research on vowel harmonic languages and with vowel harmonic language speakers. The effects of language-specific phonology on speech perception and lexical access must be considered a crucial aspect in future psycholinguistic research, particularly in regards to the aspects of language toward which speakers attend.

abstract: Incidental learning of sequential information occurs in visual, auditory and tactile domains. It occurs throughout our lifetime and even in nonhuman species. It is likely to be one of the most important foundations for the development of normal learning. To date, there is no agreement as to how incidental learning occurs. The goal of the present set of experiments is to determine if visual sequential information is learned in terms of abstract rules or stimulus-specific details. Two experiments test the extent to which interaction with the stimuli can influence the information that is encoded by the learner. The results of both experiments support the claim that stimulus and domain specific details directly shape what is learned, through a process of tuning the neuromuscular systems involved in the interaction between the learner and the materials. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2013

Une hypothèse dominant actuellement les théories sur l’évolution des capacités syntaxiques est celle d’une spécificité humaine pour le traitement des grammaires supra-régulières. Cette hypothèse est supportée par les données comparatives actuellement disponibles, qui ne fournissent pas de démonstration non ambiguë de cette capacité chez une autre espèce. Dans cette thèse, nous avons adopté une nouvelle approche consistant à examiner si ces échecs pourraient découler de la difficulté que représente l'extraction de régularités non-adjacentes. Pour tester cette hypothèse, nous avons mené une série de quatre études chez le babouin de guinée (Papio papio) et l’humain. La première étude montre que les babouins requièrent une quantité d’exposition beaucoup plus importante que l’humain pour apprendre des associations non-adjacentes. Dans une seconde étude, les babouins ont pu généraliser des patterns basés sur une répétition adjacente ou non-adjacente d’un élément, mais ils se sont montrés davantage sensibles à ces premiers. Une troisième étude, corrélationnelle, révèle que les babouins se montrant sensibles aux régularités non-adjacentes ne sont pas ceux obtenant les meilleures performances pour l’apprentissage de dépendances adjacentes. Une dernière étude suggère que les babouins sont sensibles à une structure en miroir (impliquant des dépendances centrées-emboitées), mais pas à une structure en copie (à dépendances croisées). Ces résultats mettent au jour une importante continuité des capacités syntaxiques au sein de la lignée des primates, mais révèlent également des différences inter-spécifiques importantes dans les contraintes mnésiques pesant sur celles-ci. / A current dominant hypothesis on the evolution of syntactic abilities propose that the processing of supra-regular grammars is a unique human capacity. In support of this hypothesis, artificial grammar learning studies conducted so far do not provide unambiguous demonstration of this capacity in a non-human species. In this thesis, we adopted a new approach by studying cognitive prerequisites for supra-regular grammar processing. Our hypothesis was that these previous failures could be attributed to a bias in these species towards the exploitation of local regularities and difficulties for processing more distant relationships, rather than an inability to master supra-regular grammars. We conducted a series of experiments in Guinea baboons (Papio papio) and humans to assess this hypothesis. In a first experiment, we show that baboons need much more exposure than humans to learn non-adjacent associations. In a second study, we show that baboons can generalize patterns involving an adjacent or a non-adjacent repetition of an element, but that they are more sensitive to the former. A third, correlational, study reveal that baboons succeeding to extract non-adjacent regularities are not those showing the best performance in learning local ones. A last study suggest that baboons are sensitive to a mirror structure (involving center-embedded dependencies), but not to a copy structure (crossed dependencies). Overall, our results reveal a stronger continuity in grammar processing capacities within the primate order than previously thought, but also highlight important species differences in memory constraints.

<p>The artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm has been intensively researched since the 60-s. In general, these investigations attempt to study the implicit acquisition of structural regularities. Among other things, it has been suggested that the AGL paradigm can serve as a model for the process of acquiring a natural language. Thus it can serve as a well-controlled laboratory task that might be used to understand certain aspects of the process of language acquisition. For example the AGL paradigm has been used in an attempt to isolate the acquisition of syntactic aspects of language. Several experimental studies show that the participants acquire knowledge of the underlying rule system since they are able to differentiate grammatical strings from non-grammatical ones. It has been argued that the traditionally conducted AGL paradigm with grammaticality instructions might make the task explicit, at least during the test phase. In order to imitate the language learning process as close as possible, to rule out the possibility of an explicit component during the testing phase (i.e., keeping the retrieval process implicit) and to rule out explicit rule conformity or rule following, we modified the classical AGL paradigm. In a behavioural study we combined the AGL paradigm with an altered mere exposure paradigm in an attempt to better model aspects of language acquisition. We were able to show that subjects, classifying under mere exposure instructions, categorize grammatical and non-grammatical strings just as well as those solving the classification task with the grammaticality instructions. This indicates that the mere exposure version might serve as a more appropriate model for language acquisition.</p>

The artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm has been intensively researched since the 60-s. In general, these investigations attempt to study the implicit acquisition of structural regularities. Among other things, it has been suggested that the AGL paradigm can serve as a model for the process of acquiring a natural language. Thus it can serve as a well-controlled laboratory task that might be used to understand certain aspects of the process of language acquisition. For example the AGL paradigm has been used in an attempt to isolate the acquisition of syntactic aspects of language. Several experimental studies show that the participants acquire knowledge of the underlying rule system since they are able to differentiate grammatical strings from non-grammatical ones. It has been argued that the traditionally conducted AGL paradigm with grammaticality instructions might make the task explicit, at least during the test phase. In order to imitate the language learning process as close as possible, to rule out the possibility of an explicit component during the testing phase (i.e., keeping the retrieval process implicit) and to rule out explicit rule conformity or rule following, we modified the classical AGL paradigm. In a behavioural study we combined the AGL paradigm with an altered mere exposure paradigm in an attempt to better model aspects of language acquisition. We were able to show that subjects, classifying under mere exposure instructions, categorize grammatical and non-grammatical strings just as well as those solving the classification task with the grammaticality instructions. This indicates that the mere exposure version might serve as a more appropriate model for language acquisition.