The Linguistic Adjustments of the ACT-R Model to the Acquisition of the Simple Past Tense in the Arab Learners of English Context

Abstract:

The Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational ACT-R model (Taatgen and Anderson, 2002) is one of the most recent computational models of the acquisition of simple past morphology. This empirical study focuses on the ACT-R model which is proposed in order to explain and predict language acquisition behaviour which may be relevant to the SLA of the simple past and the grammatical construction. The study was conducted on 74 Arab Learners of English (ALEs) which lasted four months. Quantitative and qualitative analysis show that the language behaviour of most of the second language learners can be explained drawing on a recent computational model of the acquisition of simple past morphology, namely the ACT-R model. Linguistic adjustments have been made by the researcher to the ACT-R model, which suggested two more strategies are added to the four strategies proposed by Taatgen and Anderson (2002) and updated by Taatgen and Dijkstra (2005). These two added strategies, namely, the L1 Transfer Strategy and the Overgeneralization of Alternative Category Strategy could capture all forms produced by the ALEs in the acquisition of the simple past tense in the three chronological writing, which the ACT-R model could not capture. The findings of the study reveal that the majority of the learners seemed to follow the six strategies proposed in the adjusted ACT-R model which can best accounted for in the acquisition of the simple past tense in the context of the ALEs.