PurposeStatistical learning—the ability to learn patterns in environmental input—is increasingly recognized as a foundational mechanism necessary for the successful acquisition of spoken language. Spoken language is a complex, serially presented signal that contains embedded statistical relations among linguistic units, such as phonemes, morphemes, and words, which represent the phonotactic and syntactic rules of language. In this review article, we first review recent work that demonstrates that, in typical language development, individuals who display better nonlinguistic statistical learning abilities also show better performance on different measures of language. We next review research findings that suggest that children who are deaf and use cochlear implants may have difficulties learning sequential input patterns, possibly due to auditory and/or linguistic deprivation early in development, and that the children who show better sequence learning abilities also display improved spoken language outcomes. Finally, we present recent findings suggesting that it may be possible to improve core statistical learning abilities with specialized training and interventions and that such improvements can potentially impact and facilitate the acquisition and processing of spoken language.
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