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1. 1
The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition
Chapter 6:
LEARNING PROCESS
-Competition Model
- Connectionist Approach
Class: E4.5
Course Subject: Applied Linguistics 402
Lecturer: MEAS Sopheak
Group 3: Seangly, Kanha, Panha, Piseth, Sophea, Neardey
Academic Year: 2010-2011

2. 2
Competition Model

3. Competition Model
• Competition Model is another psychological approach that
has addressed the general question of how languages are
learned.
• This is the functional approach which assumes that all
linguistic performance involves “mapping” between
external form and internal function.
• Examples:
– The cows eat the grass.
– The grass eats the cows.
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4. Competition Model (Cont.)
• The following determinants of cue strength:
– Task frequency: how often the form-function mapping
occurs.
– Contrastive availability: when the cue is present,
whether or not it has any contrastive effect.
– Conflict reliability: how often the cue leads to a correct
interpretation when it is used in comparison to other
potential cues.
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5. 5
Connectionist Approaches

6. Definition
• Connectionism, based on Wikipedia, is a set of approaches
in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive
psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy
of mind, that models mental or behavioral phenomena as
the emergent processes of interconnected networks of
simple units. There are many forms of connectionism, but
the most common forms use neural network models. 1
(1) Wikipedia, (n.d.). Connectionism. Retrieved on 05 June 2011, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism
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7. Characteristics
 Connectionist Approaches
• Have much in common with Information Processing (IP).
• Focus on increasing strength of association between:
Stimuli
Response
&
Stimuli: something that causes activities, development or interest.
• But NOT something on the referred abstraction of
“rules” or on restructuring.
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8. 8
Parallel Distributed Processing
• This is a best-known connectionist approach within SLA.
• Processing takes place in a network of nodes (or “units”) in
the brain that are connected.
• Learners exposed to repeated patterns of units in inputs:
 They extracted regularities in the patterns and,
 Their probabilistic associations are formed and
strengthened.

9. ??
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Parallel Distributed Processing (Cont.)
• Connection between nodes are
called “Connection strengths” or
“Patterns of activation” .
• The strength of the associations
changes with :
– The frequency of input and,
– The nature of feedback.
Then, how is “Parallel Processing” being applied?
?

10. 10
Parallel Distributed Processing (Cont.)
• “Parallel Processing” is being applied when tasks
simultaneously tap entirely different resources.
Example:
- Talking on phone
while riding a bicycle.
!!!…Obvious…!!!
- Simply reading when encoding of
phonology, syntactic structure,
meaning occur simultaneously.
!!!…Less obvious…!!!

11. 11
Parallel Distributed Processing (Cont.)
Many connections in the brain must be
activated all at once to account for
successful production and interpretation
of language, and NOT processed in
sequence.

12. 12
Thank you for your attention.