Chapter 4 in Saville-Troike covered the psychological perspectives on what is acquired in SLA. It discussed concepts, such as the specialization of each hemisphere of the brain, known as lateralization. While both hemispheres play a role in the acquisition and production of language, each hemisphere has a unique role. The left hemisphere contains Broca's area which seems to be responsible for the ability to speak and Wernick's area which seems to be central to language processing. An interesting fact about brain is that if one hemisphere is injured, the other hemisphere could potentially take over the tasks of the injured hemisphere, restoring/partially restoring abilities that would have been lost. Lateralization increases as the brain matures, which means that over time each hemisphere becomes less able to assume the functions of the other. The principal hemispheric specializations are:
Left: phonology, morphology, syntax, function words and inflections, tone systems, and much lexical knowledge
Right: Nonverbal, Visuospatial information, intonation, nonliteral meaning and ambiguity, many pragmatic abilities, and some lexical knowledge.
The two major frameworks for studying learning processes are Information Processing and Connectionism. IP is concerned with the mental processes involved in language learning and use, including perception and the input of new information, the formation, organization and regulation of internal representations, and retrieval and output strategies. Connectionism focuses on the increasing strength of associations between stimuli and responses.
Saville-Troike, as well as Lightbrown/Spada went on to explain the differences in learners when it comes to SLA. Differences in SLA among different learners can be explained by several factors: age, sex, aptitude, motivation, cognitive style, personality, and learning strategies, identity and ethnic group affiliations and learner beliefs. All of these factors combine to influence how successfully a learner acquires and L2.
The Wild Child
I was already familiar with Victor's story through a Intro to Special Ed. class I took, which looked at Victor not only in terms of his language acquisition, but also examined the speculation that Victor may have had a form of autism. While we have no way of knowing whether the latter is true, it is certain that Victor's isolated life contributed to his abnormal language development. Victor's case does seem to support Critical Period Hypothesis because his lack of exposure to language seemed to severely inhibit his ability to acquire it later, though the movie seemed to focus on a rather short period of time. Do we know how his abilities progressed in the future?
No comments:
Post a Comment