Fundamental Similarity Hypothesis References

 

'Attention and awareness'. (2015). In Jasone Cenoz, Durk Gorter and Stephen May (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd edition), Volume 6: Multilingualism and Language Awareness. Oxford: Springer.

'Attention and awareness in second language acquisition'. (2012). (with Alison Mackey, Susan Gass & Richard Schmidt). In Susan Gass & Alison Mackey (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, (Chapter 15, pp. 247-267). New York: Routledge.

'Abilities to learn—Cognitive abilities'. (2012). In Norbert Seel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning (pp.17-20) . Oxford: Springer.

'Implicit Artifical Grammar and incidental natural second language learning: How comparable are they?'. (2010). Language Learning, 60 (Supplement 1): 245-263.

'Implicit Artifical Grammar and incidental natural second language learning:How comparable are they?'. (2010). In Marianne Gullberg & Peter Indefrey (Eds.), The Earliest Stages of Language Learning, (Chapter 12, pp. 245-263). Oxford: Blackwell.

'Attention and awareness'. (2007). In Janose Cenoz (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volume 6: Knowledge about Language, (Chapter 10, pp.132-143). New York/Berlin: Springer Academic.

'Cognitive abilities, chunk-strength and frequency effects during implicit Artificial Grammar, and incidental second language learning: Replications of Reber, Walkenfeld and Hernstadt (1991) and Knowlton and Squire (1996) and their relevance to SLA.' [Special issue on] Theoretical and Empirical Issues in the Study of Implicit and Explicit Second Language Learning, Guest edited by Jan H. Hulstijn and Rod Ellis. (2005). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, (2):235-268. Cambridge University Press.

'Rules and similarity processes in Artificial Grammar and natural second language learning. What is the 'default'? Commentary on Pothos' "The rules versus similarity distinction". (2005). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, (1): 32-33. Cambridge University Press.

'Cognitive prerequisites for incidental second language learning'. (2004). In Donald L. Smith, Shuichi Nobe, Peter Robinson, Gregory J. Strong, Minako Tani, & Hiroshi Yoshiba , Language and Comprehension: Perspectives from Linguistics and Language Education, (Chapter 8, pp. 141-186). Tokyo: Kuroshio Publishing.

'Attention and memory during SLA'. (2003). In Catherine Doughty & Michael Long (Eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, (Chapter 19, pp.631-679). Oxford: Blackwell.

'Effects of individual differences in working memory, aptitude and intelligence on adult incidental second language acquisition: A replication and extension of Reber, Walkenfield and Hernstadt (1991)’. (2002). In Peter Robinson (Ed.), Individual Differences and Instructed Language Learning, (Chapter 10, pp. 211-265). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

'Generalizability and automaticity of second language learning under implicit, incidental, enhanced and instructed conditions'. (1997). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, (2): 223-247. Special Issue on Laboratory Research in Second Language Acquisition, Edited by Jan Hulstijn and Robert DeKeyser.

'Individual differences and the fundamental similarity of implicit and explicit adult second language learning.' (1997). Language Learning, 47, (1): 45-99.

'Review of "Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages" edited by Nick Ellis.' (1996). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, (4):512-513.

'Learning simple and complex second language rules under implicit, incidental, rule-search and instructed conditions.' (1996). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, (1):27-67.

Consciousness, Rules, and Instructed Second Language Acquisition. (1996). New York/ Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

'Attention, memory and the 'noticing' hypothesis.' (1995). Language Learning, 45, (2):283-331.

'Aptitude, awareness and the fundamental similarity of implicit and explicit second language learning.' (1995). In Richard Schmidt (Ed.), Attention and Awareness in Foreign Language Learning, (Chapter 9, pp.303-358). University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, Technical Report no 9. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.

'Instance theory and second language rule learning under explicit conditions.' (1993). Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15, (4):413-438.

'Problems of knowledge and the implicit/explicit distinction in SLA theory construction.' (1993). University of Hawai'i Working Papers in ESL, 12, (1):99-139.


‘The Fundamental Similarity Hypothesis (FSH) (Robinson, 1996; 1997) describes only adult L2 learning, but complements Bley-Vroman’s Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, arguing that in adulthood there is no evidence for a dissociation between dual systems of ‘unconscious’ implicit learning (Reber, 1989), or L2 acquisition (Krashen, 1981), and conscious explicit ‘learning’. The general cognitive abilities contributing to focal attention allocation, ‘noticing’ (Schmidt and Frota, 1986), and rehearsal in memory (Robinson, 1995; Williams, 1999) are argued to be implicated in the learning that results from exposure to L2 input in any condition. However, experimental task, and classroom learning conditions differ in the extent to which they predispose the input to be processed, and it is these differences, interacting with the structure of information processing abilities, that contribute largely to differences in learning outcomes. Implicit and explicit learning, and separate learning systems, may be ways of distinguishing child and adult learning, as Bley Vroman (1990) claims, but no longer dissociable processes once maturational constraints make access to ontogenetically earlier evolved implicit learning mechanisms problematic, and once domain independent problem solving procedures become established in the adult.’ (from Individual differences, cognitive abilities, aptitude complexes and learning conditions in second language acquisition’ (2001) Second Language Research, 17, (4); 368-392)

‘(The Fundamental Similarity Hypothesis).…is motivated by a quite basic claim, and consequences that follow from it. This is that attention, and awareness at the level of ‘noticing’ as Schmidt has described it (1990, 2001) are both necessary (but of course not sufficient) for subsequent L2 learning. Schmidt argues that ‘the objects of attention and noticing are elements of the surface structure of utterances in the input — instances of language, rather than any abstract rules or principles of which such instances may be exemplars’ (2001, p.5). Schmidt does concede that higher levels of awareness, such as rule awareness, may also often be positively implicated in L2 learning. Schmidt, then, argues that in this sense all L2 learning is initially conscious, and that unconscious ‘implicit’ learning does not occur during adult SLA. Similar claims have been made about the interpretation of Reber’s (1989) experiments supposedly demonstrating unconscious, unaware rule abstraction during artificial grammar learning by Perruchet (1994; Perruchet & Pacteau, 1990), Shanks and St. John (1994), Whittlesea and Wright (1997) and others. They argue, convincingly, that changes in performance following learning under ‘implicit’ conditions … may very well result from fragmentary, episodic and conscious knowledge of co-occurring features in the input, and is not evidence for more than that (i.e., rule abstraction) and that typically, measures of awareness used are insensitive to such conscious knowledge. One should be cautious, that is, in attributing the learning that results from exposure under ‘implicit’ conditions to unconscious ‘implicit’ cognition (see Robinson, 1996b, 2002b; and DeKeyser, 2002, for SLA oriented reviews of this debate).
        Perruchet and Vintner (2002) argue that there is, in principle, no need to propose unconscious ‘implicit knowledge’ of any kind develops during learning, whatever the instructional set to the learning task the researcher/ experimenter or language teacher aims to induce in learners. All adult learning begins with phenomenal, aware experience, and subsequent unconscious processes operate on the representational content of phenomenal experience with the result that all knowledge is explicit (cf. also Carlson, 1997; Dulany, 1997; Dulany, Carlson & Dewey, 1984; O’Brien & Opie, 2001; Perruchet & Vintner, 1998). ‘In this alternative, "mentalistic" framework, to borrow Dulany’s terminology, the only representations people create and manipulate are those which form the momentary phenomenal experience. The main challenge is to explain why the phenomenal experience of adult people consists of perceptions and representations of the world which are generally isomorphic with the world structure, without needing recourse to a powerful cognitive unconscious. Our proposal is that this isomorphism is the end-product of a progressive organization that emerges thanks to elementary associative processes that take the conscious representations themselves as the stuff on which they operate’ (Perruchet & Vintner, 2002, p. 2).
        In this view all adult second language learning is fundamentally similar. There are no conscious versus unconscious systems of learning leading to explicit versus implicit knowledge. But adult learners differ in the eventual extent of L2 learning, and so it follows that individual differences in the cognitive abilities learners bring to the task of processing input in an L2 will be related to the extent of initial noticing, as well as to the extent of higher levels of awareness of the input (Robinson, 1995b, 1996b, 2002b). It also follows that different patterns of abilities will likely be relatively more sensitive to, or inhibited by, the conditions under which input, or feedback, is presented….’
(from 'Aptitudes, abilities, contexts and practice’. (2007) In Robert DeKeyser (Ed.), Practice in Second Language Learning: Perspectives from Linguistics and Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press )