Can poor readers be good learners? Non-adjacent dependency learning in adults with dyslexia

This study aimed to test whether adults with dyslexia are impaired at non-adjacent dependency learning, and whether potential learning difficulties are domain-specific or not. Participants were familiarised with one of two artificial languages containing dependencies between the first and third element of a string of nonsense words, e.g. “tep wadim lut”. Dyslexic and non-dyslexic adults were equally good at learning the dependencies, although a trend towards a group difference was found when test sentences contained novel middle words, requiring generalisation of the pattern. The groups did not differ on learning dependencies between unfamiliar shapes in a visual experiment. These results provide tentative support for a domain-specific learning deficit for adults with dyslexia, suggesting that they may be poorer at generalizing from language input.