Previous research has shown that statistical learning (SL) abilities correlate with language abilities. This study investigated the modality specificity of SL, its independence from other general cognitive abilities, its effect on reading comprehension, and its interaction with morphosyntactic processing. Fifty adults participated in a self-paced reading experiment and several cognitive tests. The self-paced reading experiment included Turkish sentences varying in morphosyntactic complexity (active canonical, active scrambled, and passive sentences). Also, auditory and visual SL tests with familiarization and test phases were developed employing triplets of auditory (synthesized syllables) and visual (alien pictures) stimuli with higher transitional probability within than between triplets. The participants’ short-term/working memory abilities and nonverbal intelligence scores were also measured using forward/backward digit span tests and Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices, respectively. The results revealed similar learning rates and no significant correlation between auditory and visual SL scores. In addition, no significant correlation was found between SL scores and non-verbal intelligence or short-term/working memory scores. Finally, linear mixed-effects models showed that both visual and auditory SL influenced morphosyntactic processing, although in different ways. The findings suggest that SL is modality-specific and largely independent of other general cognitive abilities. The findings also suggest that individuals with higher SL abilities may utilize probabilistic patterns of morphosyntactic information during sentence processing more efficiently than those with lower SL abilities. These results provide new evidence for the link between SL and language from a morphologically rich language. Overall, these findings reinforce the link between SL and language processing in general and morphosyntactic processing in particular and have implications for language interventions in clinical populations.
Bulut et al. (Mon,) studied this question.