In this article, we explore the extraction of recursive nested structure in the processing of binary sequences. Our aim was to determine whether humans learn the higher-order regularities of a highly simplified input where only sequential-order information marks the hierarchical structure. To this end, we implemented a sequence generated by the…

Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts approximately 7% of the population and is characterized by unexplained deficits in expressive and/or receptive components of language. A common procedural learning task, serial reaction time (SRT), has been used to develop models of the basis of DLD.…

Some theories have proposed that autistic individuals have difficulty learning predictive relationships. We tested this hypothesis using a serial reaction time task in which participants learned to predict the locations of a repeating sequence of target locations. We conducted a large-sample online study with 61 autistic and 71 neurotypical…

This study examined the changes in saccadic amplitude associated with learning a visual sequence. The oculomotor system gradually adjusts saccadic parameters when tracking a visual stimulus, which has a predictable trajectory. In these contexts, the change in saccadic amplitudes leads to predictive fixations. That is, fixations made to a position…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether a new oculomotor serial reaction time (RT) task revealed statistical sequence learning in young children. Method: We used eye tracking to measure typically developing children's oculomotor RTs in response to cartoon-like creatures that appeared successively in quadrants of a monitor…

Sequential action makes up the bulk of human daily activity, and yet much remains unknown about how people learn such actions. In one motor learning paradigm, the serial reaction time (SRT) task, people are taught a consistent sequence of button presses by cueing them with the next target response. However, the SRT task only records keypress…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate whether dual language experience affects procedural learning ability in typically developing children and in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: We examined procedural learning in monolingual and bilingual school-aged children (ages 8-12 years) with and without SLI. The…

It is assumed that learning on the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task is related to learning involved in social skill development affected in autism, but this assumption has hardly been investigated. We have therefore examined associations between SRT task learning and social impairment measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale in 72 autistic and…

Sleep is considered to support the formation of skill memory. In juvenile but not adult song birds learning a tutor's song, a stronger initial deterioration of song performance over night-sleep predicts better song performance in the long run. This and similar observations have stimulated the view of sleep supporting skill formation during…

Developmental psychology plays a central role in shaping evidence-based best practices for prelingually deaf children. The Auditory Scaffolding Hypothesis (Conway et al., 2009) asserts that a lack of auditory stimulation in deaf children leads to impoverished implicit sequence learning abilities, measured via an artificial grammar learning (AGL)…

Previous research suggests that individuals with developmental dyslexia perform below typical readers on non-linguistic cognitive tasks involving the learning and encoding of statistical-sequential patterns. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such a deficit have not been well examined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the…

It is almost a truism that language aids serial-order control through self-cuing of upcoming sequential elements. We measured speech onset latencies as subjects performed hierarchically organized task sequences while "thinking aloud" each task label. Surprisingly, speech onset latencies and response times (RTs) were highly synchronized,…

Some studies suggest that dual-task processing impairs sequence learning; others suggest it does not. The reason for this discrepancy remains obscure. It may have to do with the dual-task procedure often used. Many dual-task sequence learning studies pair the serial reaction time (SRT) task with a tone-counting secondary task. The tone-counting…

Even when two-digit numbers are irrelevant to the task at hand, adults process them. Do children process numbers automatically, and if so, what kind of information is activated? In a novel dot-number Stroop task, children (Grades 1-5) and adults were shown two different two-digit numbers made up of dots. Participants were asked to select the…

The ability to learn temporal patterns in sequenced actions was investigated in elementary-school age children. Temporal learning depends upon a process of integrating timing patterns with action sequences. Children ages 6-13 and young adults performed a serial response time task in which a response and a timing sequence were presented repeatedly…