Statistical learning as a buffer: Investigating its impact on the link between home environment and reading achievement

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• Chinese radical positional SL moderates the direct and indirect effect of SES on reading. • Chinese phonetic SL moderates the direct effect of SES on reading. • Vocabulary knowledge and MA mediate the effects of family SES on reading. • Vocabulary knowledge but not MA mediates the effects of HLE on reading. • Domain-specific SL may help reduce the effects of a low SES environment on reading. The current study investigated the association between home environment and children’s reading outcomes, with a focus on the mediating roles of vocabulary and morphological awareness (MA) and the moderating roles of statistical learning (SL). A sample of 191 8-year-old Chinese children (92 girls) with diverse socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds completed assessments of vocabulary knowledge, MA, nonlinguistic visual and auditory SL, Chinese positional and phonetic SL, reading tasks, nonverbal reasoning, and verbal working memory. Results showed that both vocabulary and MA mediated the relationship between SES and reading, but only vocabulary mediated the relationship between home literacy environment (HLE) and reading. Importantly, children who were better in domain-specific SL, particularly those with strong Chinese radical positional SL, were less affected by SES disparities in reading outcomes. However, SL did not moderate the associations between HLE and reading outcomes.