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.

Description

Keywords

Paired associate learning task, Phonological awareness, Word-reading

Citation

Copyright 2016 Learning and Individual Differences. This is a post-print version of a published paper that is available at:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608014002489. Recommended citation: Mourgues, Catalina, Mei Tan, Sascha Hein, Emma Ojanen, Jodi Reich, Heikki Lyytinen, and Elena L. Grigorenko. "Paired associate learning tasks and their contribution to reading skills." Learning and individual differences 46 (2016): 54-63. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2014.12.003. This item has been deposited in accordance with publisher copyright and licensing terms and with the author's permission.