Several studies have signaled grammatical difficulties in individuals with developmental dyslexia. These difficulties may stem from a phonological deficit, but may alternatively be explained through a domain-general deficit in statistical learning. This study investigates grammar in children with and without dyslexia, and whether phonological memory and/or statistical learning ability contribute to individual differences in grammatical performance. We administered the CELF “word structure” and “recalling sentences” subtests and measures of phonological memory (digit span, nonword repetition) and statistical learning (serial reaction time, nonadjacent dependency learning) among 8- to 11-year-old children with and without dyslexia (N = 50 per group). Consistent with previous findings, our results show subtle difficulties in grammar, as children with dyslexia achieved lower scores on the CELF (word structure: p = .0027, recalling sentences: p = .053). While the two phonological memory measures were found to contribute to individual differences in grammatical performance, no evidence for a relationship with statistical learning was found. An error analysis revealed errors in irregular morphology (e.g., plural and past tense), suggesting problems with lexical retrieval. These findings are discussed in light of theoretical accounts of the underlying deficit in dyslexia.

中文翻译：

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阅读障碍儿童的语法表现：个体差异对语音记忆和统计学习的贡献

几项研究表明患有发育性阅读障碍的个体存在语法困难。这些困难可能源于语音缺陷，但也可以通过统计学习中的领域一般缺陷来解释。本研究调查患有和不患有阅读障碍的儿童的语法，以及语音记忆和/或统计学习能力是否会导致语法表现的个体差异。我们对 8 至 11 岁患有和没有阅读障碍（ñ= 每组 50 个）。与之前的研究结果一致，我们的结果显示出语法上的细微困难，因为阅读障碍儿童在 CELF 上的得分较低（单词结构：p= .0027，回忆句子：p= .053)。虽然发现两种语音记忆测量有助于语法表现的个体差异，但没有发现与统计学习相关的证据。错误分析揭示了不规则形态（例如复数和过去时）的错误，表明词汇检索存在问题。这些发现是根据对阅读障碍潜在缺陷的理论解释进行讨论的。