Implicit Graphemes Learning among Poor Readers

Abstract

Poor implicit learning was suggested to be associated with poor orthographic knowledge. The current study examined the differences between twenty typical (age 8.68 ±.15), and twenty poor readers (age 8.45 ±.22) in implicit learning of novel graphemes. In the first stage, each participant was passively displayed with 80 pairs of real and artificial words. The artificial words were composed from artificial symbols. After the passive learning stage, each participant was tested with a grapheme matching decision task. The results showed that the accuracy levels which were recorded among the typical readers were significantly higher than those of the poor readers. The accuracy levels which were recorded among the poor readers showed a type of chance level of performance indicating an absence of implicit learning consolidation. However, the results did not show any significant differences in the response times between the two groups. In addition, significant larger individual standard deviations were recorded for the poor group of readers, for both accuracy and the response time of performance, indicating a non-solid type of implicit learning consolidation among this group. The results were discussed considering the association between poor implicit learning capacities and poor orthographic learning.