Statistical learning (SL) is the ability to rapidly track statistical regularities and learn patterns in the environment. Recent studies show that SL is constrained by domain-specific features, rather than being a uniform learning mechanism across domains and modalities. This domain-specificity has been reflected at the neural level, as SL occurs in regions primarily involved in processing of specific modalities or domains of input. However, our understanding of how SL is constrained by domain-specific features in the developing brain is severely lacking. The present study aims to identify the functional neural profiles of auditory SL of linguistic and nonlinguistic regularities among children. Thirty children between 5 and 7 years old completed an auditory fMRI SL task containing interwoven sequences of structured and random syllable/tone sequences. Using traditional group univariate analyses and a group-constrained subject-specific analysis, frontal and temporal cortices showed significant activation when processing structured versus random sequences across both linguistic and nonlinguistic domains. However, conjunction analyses failed to identify overlapping neural indices across domains. These findings are the first to compare brain regions supporting SL of linguistic and nonlinguistic regularities in the developing brain and indicate that auditory SL among developing children may be constrained by domain-specific features.

This content is only available as a PDF.

Competing Interests

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author notes

Handling Editor: Kate Watkins

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Supplementary data