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The Psychology of Second Language AcquisitionChapter 6:

LEARNING PROCESS- Competition Model

- Connectionist Approach

Class: E4.5Course Subject: Applied Linguistics 402Lecturer: MEAS SopheakGroup 3: Seangly, Kanha, Panha, Piseth, Sophea, NeardeyAcademic Year: 2010-2011

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Competition Model

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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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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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Connectionist Approaches

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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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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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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.

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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??

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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…!!!

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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.

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Thank you for your attention.

Q&A