psychology of SLA. Psycholinguistics perspective of language acquisition.

1. Psychology of SLA
psycholinguistic perspective
By:Sakar Hussein

2.  An interdisciplinary field which brings together
linguistics and psychology to understand the mental
processes and psychological mechanisms which make it
possible for humans to acquire, understand, produce and
process language.
 Psycholinguistic studies focus on the relationship
between brain, language and behaviour.
 For descriptions of language, the field relies on the
findings of linguistics, which is the discipline that
describes the structure of language.

3.  Although the acquisition, comprehension, and production of language
have been at the core of psycholinguistic research, the field has
expanded considerably since its inception:
 The neurology of language functioning is of current interest to
psycholinguists, particularly to those studying sex differences, aphasia,
language after congenital or acquired injury to the immature brain, and
developmental disorders of language (dysphasia).
 Psycholinguistics provides a valuable tool not only for scientific
research but also for daily life as advancements will allow teachers to
better educate children in schools while therapists will be able to help
those whose language ability is impaired.

4. Language Acquisition
 is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to
perceive, produce and use words to understand and
communicate. It involves the picking up of diverse
capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive
vocabulary.
 cooing- 6 months- use phonemes from every language
 babbling- 9 months- selectively use phonemes from their
native language
 one word utterances- 12 months- start using single words
 telegraphic speech- 2 years- multi-word utterances that lack in
function
 normal speech- 5 years- almost normal developed speech

5. Comprehension
 The comprehension of language in the domains of both written and
spoken communication requires the decoding of print or acoustic
features of speech to create mental representations of meaning, events,
and situations.
 Language comprehension is one of the most automatic tasks that
humans perform. Yet it is also one of the most complex, requiring the
simultaneous integration of many different types of information, such
as knowledge about letters and their sounds, spelling, grammar, word
meanings, and general world knowledge. In addition, general cognitive
abilities such as attention monitoring, inferencing, and memory
retrieval are used in order to organise this information into a single
meaningful representation.

6.  For an utterance to be meaningful, certain requirements have to
be met. For instance, people make use of words in different
ways depending on communicative situations and their
intentions. Consequently, the recipients of oral or written speech
must be able to differentiate between the nuances these words
convey and the discourse environment within which they are
used, to be able to comprehend the meaning and intent of any
speech act.
 For the most part, we take the ability to accomplish this task for
granted. However, for those with language-based disabilities –
including developmental disabilities (such as dyslexia, specific
comprehension impairment, or speech deficits) and acquired
disabilities (such as language impairment after brain injury) –
assembling all this information accurately is a major challenge.

7. Production
O Language production is logically divided into three
major steps: deciding what to express
(conceptualization), determining how to express it
(formulation), and expressing it (articulation; Levelt,
1989)
 Generating Words
 Basic Steps of Word Production
 Selecting A Content Word
 Generating function words and morphemes
 Assembling the Sounds of a Word
 Time course of processes in word production

8. Languages and the brain
 Study of languages and the brain is based largely on
the framework provided by Neurolinguistics,
 which involves the studies of neural connections in the brain
involved in the comprehension, production, and acquisition of
language as well as how the brain uses these mechanisms in
daily life.
 seeks to answer questions about how the location and
organization of language might differ in the heads of
monolingual versus multilingual speakers, and of multilinguals
who acquire second languages at different ages or under
differing circumstances.

10. Aphasia
O Aphasia refers to language and communication impairment
acquired as a result of a stroke, trauma, tumors and other
neurological disease.
O Aphasia, also sometimes referred to as dysphasia, occurs when
there is impairment or disruption of the language centers of the
brain and their connections.
O Aphasia can affect spoken language (expressive aphasia),
comprehension (receptive aphasia),reading (alexia) and
writing (agraphia).

11.  Two kinds of aphasia are commonly distinguished.
1) In motor (Broca’s) aphasia the patient manifests
difficulty in the articulation of speech or in writing
and may produce utterances with a simplified
grammatical structure, but his comprehension is not
affected.
2) In sensory (Wernicke’s) aphasia the patient’s
fluency may be unaffected, but his comprehension
will be impaired and his utterances will often be
incoherent.

12.  Bilingual people with aphasia who speak two or
more languages may find each language is similarly
affected or that one language is more affected than
the others.
 The best-recovered language may be the first
language (mother tongue) or can be the language
most frequently used.
 For individuals who were less proficient in their
second language, aphasia may lead to apparent
loss of the second language.

13. Individual differences (IDs)
O are characteristics or traits in respect of which individuals may
be shown to differ from each other.
O ID constructs refer to dimensions of enduring personal
characteristics that are assumed to apply to everybody and on
which people differ by degree.
O They concern anything that marks a person as a distinct and
unique human being.
O IDs have been found to be the most consistent predictors of L2
learning success.

14. Information processing (IP)
O Approaches based on IP are concerned with the mental
processes involved in language learning and use. These
include perception and the input of new information; the
formation, organization, and regulation of internal
(mental) representations; and retrieval and output
strategies
input Central processing Output
Perception Controlled–automatic processing production
Declarative–procedural knowledge
Restructuring

15. Connectionism Theory
 Connectionism theory is based on the principle of active learning and
is the result of the work of the American psychologist Edward
Thorndike.
 This work led to Thorndike’s Laws. According to these Laws,
learning is achieved when an individual is able to form associations
between a particular stimulus and a response.
 The three main laws are the Law of Readiness, the Law of Exercise,
and the Law of Effect.
 connectionism is not a theory of how knowledge is remembered
but of how it is constructed out of memory”.

16. Complexity Theory
 Complex systems are dynamic, nonlinear, open,
interconnected with the environment, and comprised
of many components.
 As the components interact, new unanticipated
patterns emerge.
 According to Larsen- Freeman (1997), complexity
means there are so many separate interrelated
factors within one intricate entity that it is exceedingly
difficult to bring order and simplicity to that “chaos’’.

17. As applied to second language acquisition,
O the metaphor of a developmental ladder becomes
inadequate to explain the progress, regress, and the
multidimensionality of SLA from a target language
perspective.
O A better metaphor is that of a web of language
resources, continually being constructed by
language learners.
O Diane Larsen-Freeman, argued that SLA is a
dynamic, complex and non-linear system • Each
learner takes a different path to achieve success.

18. Processability Theory(PT)
 It is a theory of second language acquisition developed
by Manfred Pienemann.
 (PT) is a cognitive approach to second language
acquisition that seeks to explain developmental
schedules as well as learner variation.
 PT also includes theoretical modules dealing with L1
transfer, inter-learner variation and the role of linguistic
typology. It comes with detailed methodological tools.
 PT’s core assumption is that learners can produce only
what they can process.

19. Age Differences in SLA
• Younger advantage * Older advantage
• • Brain plasticity • Learning capacity
• • Not analytical • Analytic ability
• • Fewer inhibitions (usually) • Pragmatic skills
• • Weaker group identity • Greater knowledge of L1
• • Simplified input more likely • Real-world knowledge

20. The Critical Period
O A period during childhood when the human brain is
most ready to receive input and learn a particular
language.
O It may start earlier in the womb, however the general
view is that it lasts from birth until puberty.
O The reason behind the critical period is thought to be
of a biological (or maturational) nature and related to
neurophysiological changes in the brain that allow,
for example, the creation of more complex neural
networks early in life.

21.  There are consecutive sensitive periods for each of
the language domains, in the following order:
1) phonology (between age 0 and age 6)
2) lexis and collocation (between age 0 and age 10)
3) morphosyntax (between age 0 and age 12).
4) A 2018 study co-authored by Steven Pinker, a
professor of psychology at Harvard University, with
data on 669,498 people learning a second
language around the world confirmed a critical
period for grammar: learners could reach native like
scores on a quiz if they had started learning the
language before the age of 17 or 18.

22. motivation
O instrumental motivation. That is, they want to learn the
L2 in order to achieve some other goal, such as
completing a school graduation requirement or being
able to read scientific publications, but not really for any
social purposes.
O In contrast, those learners with an integrative motivation
want to learn the L2 for social purposes, in order to take
part in the social life of a community using that language
and to become an accepted member of that community

23. Sex
 There do appear to be some sex differences in language
acquisition and processing, but the research evidence is mixed.
 Of particular potential relevance to SLA are findings in relation
to mental representations in the lexicon versus the grammar:
 females seem to be better at memorizing complex forms, while
males appear to be better at computing compositional rules (e.g.
Halpern 2000).
 Other differences may be related to hormonal variables: higher
androgen level correlates with better automatized skills, and
high estrogen with better semantic/interpretive skills (Mack
1992).
 Kimura (1992) reports that higher levels of articulatory and
motor ability have been associated in women with higher levels
of estrogen during the menstrual cycle.

24. Aptitude
O The assumption that there is a talent which is
specific to language learning has been widely held
for many years.
O The following four components available were
proposed by Carroll (1965) as underlying this talent,
and they constitute the bases for most aptitude tests:
 •Phonemic coding ability
 •Inductive language learning ability
 • Grammatical sensitivity
 •Associative memory capacity

25. References
1. A Dictionary of Language Acquisition : A Comprehensive Overview of Key
Terms in First and Second Language Acquisition by Hossein Tavakoli.
2. Teaching and Researching Speaking by Rebecca Hughes.
3. The study of language by George Yule.
4. A critical period to learn a second language? By : Gisela Granena
5. Chaos/Complexity Theory for Second Language Acquisition/Development by
Diane Larsen‐Freeman
6. Aphasia in single-language and bilingual individuals by Amanda Miller Amberber
7. Toward a Theory of Second Language Acquisition
8. Introducing Second Language Acquisition by Muriel Saville-Troike
9. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv6sPAkxPQVOEtFQyuVd_iA
10. Instructional Design Models and Theories: Connectionism by Chris Lee
11. Psycholinguistics by N.B.Ratner & J.B.Gleason
12. https://www.britannica.com/science/linguistics/Linguistics-and-other-
disciplines#ref411913
13. https://www.bestdegreeprograms.org/faq/what-is-psycholinguistics/