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Psychological perspectives on what is acquired in SLA concentrate on additions or changes that occur in neurological makeup, and on how the multilingual brain is organized.

Psychological perspectives on what is acquired in SLA concentrate on additions or changes that occur in neurological makeup, and on how the multilingual brain is organized. We have seen that the physical representation of the second language in the brain is not very different from the first, but there are differences in brain organization which relate to how proficient people are in L2, and to how they learned it. In contrast to Chomsky’s proposal that there is a species-specific Language Acquisition Device (LAD), the psychologists surveyed in this chapter generally view how second languages are learned as involving the same processes as the acquisition of other areas of complex knowledge and skills: i.e. “learning is learning.” Some consider the processes to be largely a matter of abstracting rules or principles, and some to be more a physical neurological development of associative networks and connections. The question of why some learners are more successful than others leads to the examination of differences in the learners themselves. We find that language-learning outcomes are influenced by age, aptitude, and motivation. Other factors in individuals’ learning styles and strategies correlate with degree of success in SLA, but we can be much less sure of claims for cause–effect relationships.
Humans are inherently social creatures, and it is difficult to assess individual cognitive factors in language learning apart from the influence of the learner’s total social context, to which we turn next.