ABSTRACT
As with the field of linguistics, the field of psychology has significantly influenced the study of second language acquisition (SLA). This chapter outlines approaches to SLA with a basis in psycholinguistic processing. In linguistics, the emphasis is on constraints on grammar formation, whereas in psychology, the emphasis is on the actual mechanisms involved in SLA, as well as on issues e.g., working memory capacity that affect those mechanism. The chapter begins with a discussion of models of language production and then moves to various processing approaches. There are two dominant psycholinguistic models of the processing that occurs in First language (L1) speech production: the spreading activation model and modular models. The formulation of the message in L1 speech production is considered an automatic process, unlike conceptualization of the message, which requires direct attention control. Processability Theory relies on the concept of a linguistic processor, or a human language processor, as a feature of the mind.
