Paired associate learning tasks and their contribution to reading skills

Abstract

Associative learning has been identified as one of several non-linguistic processes involved in reading acquisition. However, it has not been established whether it is an independent process that contributes to reading performance on its own or whether it is a process that is embedded in other linguistic skills (e.g., phonological awareness or phonological memory) and, therefore, contributing to reading performance indirectly. Research has shown that performance on tasks assessing associative learning, e.g., paired-associate learning (PAL) tasks, is lower in children with specific reading difficulties compared to typical readers. We explored the differential associations of two distinct verbal-visual PAL tasks (the Bala Bbala Graphogame, BBG, and a Foreign Language Learning Task, FLLT) with reading skills (word reading and pseudo-word decoding), controlling for phonological awareness, rapid naming, and letter and digit span in children at risk for reading disabilities and their typically developing peers. Our study sample consisted of 110 children living in rural Zambia, ranging in age from 7 to 18 years old (48.1% female). Multivariate analyses of covariance were used to explore the group differences in reading performance. Repeated-measures ANCOVA was used to examine children’s learning across the PAL tasks. The differential relationships between both PAL tasks and reading performance were explored via structural equation modeling. The main result was that the children at risk for reading difficulties had lower performance on both PAL tasks. The BBG was a significant predictor for both word reading and pseudo-word decoding, whereas the FLLT—only for word reading. Performance on the FLLT partially mediated the association between phonological awareness and word reading. These results illustrate the partial independence of associative learning from other reading-related skills; the specifics of this relationship vary based on the type of PAL task administered.

The Production Effect Improves Memory in 7‐ to 10‐Year‐Old Children

“…Focus should now shift to establishing the influence of different retrieval conditions under which the effect is evident in this age group, as well as to investigating the influence of production on other educationally relevant materials, such as texts (see Ozubko, Gopie, et al., ; Ozubko, Hourihan, et al., ). Further work examining whether production enhances memory for associative information in addition to item information (see Putnam, Ozubko, MacLeod, & Roediger, ) will also be useful given the relevance of associative learning in the acquisition of language and reading skills (Mourgues et al., ). Such a program of research will shed light on the different aspects of learning and memory that are enhanced by speech production in children.…”

Exploring factors underlying children’s acquisition and retrieval of sound–symbol association skills

“…Another issue that might have led to differences in the associations with other variables across studies is measurement error and the use of observed vs. latent variables. Except for the study by Lervåg andcolleagues (2009, partly also Litt et al, 2013), PAL performance and most of the other reading precursor skills were adopted as observed variables (de Jong et al, 2000;Georgiou et al, 2017;Hulme et al, 2007;Mourgues et al, 2016;Poulsen & Elbro, 2018;Warmington & Hulme, 2012;Windfuhr & Snowling, 2001).…”

Vocabulary, Metalinguistic Awareness and Language Dominance Among Bilingual Preschool Children

“…Children with poorer phonological awareness learned novel and non-novel words less accurately or more slowly ( Hu and Schuele, 2005 ; Hu, 2008 ). Longitudinally, phonological awareness plays a role when words are relearnt ( Hu, 2003 ) and phonological processing of novel words is based on sublexical representations, which are phonological and unstructured ( Marecka et al, 2018 ).…”