Dissociation between online and offline learning in developmental dyslexia

Abstract

Most studies investigating procedural learning in developmental dyslexia (DD) have focused on the acquisition stage, ignoring later stages involved in the process of skill learning. The current study examined sequence learning among DD and control groups in two sessions. Both groups completed a sequence-learning task over a first session (online learning) and a second session 24 hours later (offline learning). While both groups showed improvements in performance during offline learning, only the control group showed improvements in performance during online learning. Moreover, the DD group differed from the control group in their ability to recover from the introduction of a different sequence.

Keywords:

• Developmental dyslexia
• Procedural learning
• Sequence learning
• Memory Consolidation
• Automaticity

Acknowledgments

This study is part of the research conducted at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, by Yafit Gabay as partial fulfillment of her requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy degree.