A meta-analysis of 97 studies reveals that statistical learning and language ability are only weakly correlated

Abstract

Despite the widely held belief that individual differences in statistical learning (SL) abilities are associated with linguistic skills, research has produced mixed results. To provide a comprehensive assessment of the literature, we conducted a meta-analysis of 97 studies examining the correlation between SL and linguistic abilities. Results revealed a small but significant overall correlation (r = .16). Our analysis considered sample characteristics, SL task features, and the type of language test as predictors of the strength of observed correlations. Notably, variation across studies was only accounted for by SL task features (i.e., paradigm, stimulus modality and stimulus domain). No indications of publication bias were identified. These findings lend support to a positive yet limited association between SL and language outcomes and underscore the need for thoughtful task selection.

Early caregiver predictability shapes neural indices of statistical learning later in infancy

“…Subsequent investigations have demonstrated that learners of all ages (Campbell et al, 2012;Fló et al, 2019Fló et al, , 2022Saffran et al, 1997;Teinonen et al, 2009) can use the regularities naturally present in their environment to track statistical patterns across sensory domains highlighting the broad importance of this learning mechanism (Conway & Christiansen, 2005;Fiser & Aslin, 2002;Kirkham et al, 2002;Saffran et al, 1999). Although there are both individual differences (Siegelman & Frost, 2015) and developmental change in statistical learning (Forest, Abolghasem, et al, 2023;Jung et al, 2020;Raviv & Arnon, 2018), this process is well-known to support much of the environmental learning which pervades early life, and predicts later behaviors such as reading ability (Arciuli & Simpson, 2012;Spencer et al, 2015), and linguistic performance (Boeve et al, 2023;Kidd & Arciuli, 2016;Misyak & Christiansen, 2012;Shafto et al, 2012;Singh et al, 2012).…”