Atypical Mechanisms of Visual Statistical Learning in Children with Developmental Language Disorder: An fMRI Study

Description: This dataset includes whole-brain statistical maps from a longitudinal fMRI study investigating visual statistical learning (SL) in children aged 6–9 years with developmental language disorder (DLD; n = 27) and typically developing (TD; n = 35) peers. Participants completed an SL task involving visual sequences under two stimulus conditions: easy-to-name(EN; animal drawings) and difficult-to-name (DN; abstract Hebrew letters). Sequences were either structured (1-back transitional probabilities) or random. Functional scans were collected at two time points: before and after one week of home-based SL training. At the first-level analysis, individual contrast maps were computed comparing BOLD responses to structured vs. random sequences (Statistic > Random), separately for each stimulus type. At the second level, full-factorial SPM12 models (2 Group × 2 Time) were implemented separately for EN and DN conditions. Crucially, group-level models included four z-scored covariates representing individual performance index (PI) for each group and session, enabling the analysis of brain–behavior associations and their modulation by group and training. Additional analyses included F-tests on PI covariates (Group × Time interaction) and t-tests comparing group differences in PI-related activation at each time point. All functional images were acquired on a 3T Siemens Prisma scanner. Preprocessing included motion correction, normalization to MNI space, and spatial smoothing (6 mm FWHM). Data quality control included framewise displacement scrubbing and a minimum tSNR threshold of 100.

Communities: developmental

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