ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of what one might call a cognitive approach to learning. It first consider issues of child language acquisition, because it was this field that many of the earlier cognitive approaches to L2 learning drew from. In order to challenge the concept of language transfer, studies were conducted to show the percentage of errors attributable to the native language (NL) (although it should be noted that NL-based errors were conceptualized as translation equivalents), as opposed to more subtle varieties of error source. The major theoretical significance of the studies was to demonstrate that the NL was an insignificant influence and that behaviorism could not be maintained to account for the process of Second Language Acquisition. One of the main concepts that appeared early in the L2 literature is what is known as the Affective Filter, which was intended to account in large part for why some people were able to learn L2s while others were not.
