The Role of Declarative and Procedural Learning in Adolescent Emergent Reading

The majority of reading research takes place in high-income ‘Minority World’ countries where children typically begin learning to read in early childhood. This research, however, does not reflect the experience of many children around the world who learn to read later in childhood or in adolescence. Crucially, children who learn to read later in life may rely on different cognitive systems. Specifically, procedural learning, which supports sequence and pattern learning, reaches maturity around early adolescence, while declarative learning, which supports the arbitrary mapping of form and meaning, continues to develop into adulthood. The declarative/procedural model of learning posits that the role of declarative learning increases as an individual ages, and as it matures will overlap, and compete, with typically procedural supported learning. Therefore, declarative supported learning may lead to poorer outcomes for older first-time readers. This study examined the potential competition between procedural and declarative learning among emergent readers (n = 88) in rural Cote d’Ivoire, aged 10-16. We examined performance on culturally-appropriate declarative and procedural memory tasks, and found that declarative learning competes with procedural learning, such that stronger declarative memory negatively impacts the development of early reading skills. These findings are important for understanding the role of learning systems, and their interaction with age, in supporting literacy development.