Language processing capacities and learning abilities - Dissertation Example

Lust and Foley (2004) indicate that the rapid progress in the field of L1 acquisition, combined with the challenge of increasingly interdisciplinary literature, has turned into an overwhelming challenge to all scholars in the field. Their volume contains research into the philosophy and science of language acquisition. Articles include discoveries about the way children acquire abstract systems combining discrete symbolic elements in a language. Lust and Foley’s selected readings have an emphasis on linguistic theory, and they assert that theoretical positions in the field have often become polarized.

Theoretical disputes are interpreted as a sign of vitality in the field.Johnson (2004) focuses on a review of traditional cognitive approaches to second language acquisition research, and offers a more sociocultural perspective. Her work reviews behaviorist, cognitivist, and information processing approaches to SLA. The author makes an overview of Vygotsky’s theory, including discussion of inter- and intrapersonal interaction, the proximal development zone, and the role of language in mental processes development.

She emphasizes the need to explore local second language ability, in terms of social environment, local genres, and institutional contexts.Bialystok et al. (2008) performed two studies to investigate lexical access in bilinguals. In the first one, monolinguals performed better than bilinguals on tests of naming and letter fluency, but not on category fluency. No differences existed with regard to vocabulary size