Role of Cognition

Cognitive process is a mental activity that allows human beings to receive and perceive information so as to coordinate neural activities to achieve both explicit and implicit tasks assigned by the central executive frontal lobes.

I have always wondered how this ability affects a person’s second language acquisition. A subject’s first language skills should be, in general, well developed and his or her brain should not have any impairment, either. Under this circumstance, the subject must be able to use cognitive ability to learn a second language in a natural setting. My question is: how do we perceive sentences or phrases in foreign languages and comprehend contexts completely without losing much original semantic meaning?

Presumably, social and cultural differences could play a critical role in learning a second language. But what about the role of cognition? Do we change our cognitive processes when learning a second language? How much effort is enough for a person to process information in a second language, especially in terms of cognition, as well as in the first? Could it be possible? Different tasks might require various concentration and mechanisms. The point is how we can measure a second language learner’s cognitive ability?

To be continued…