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This review focuses on contemporary research into instructed second language acquisition (SLA), and the extent to which its constructs, procedures, and findings can inform theoretical models of aptitude and further development of measures of abilities administered during aptitude tests. Second language (L2) learning aptitude is characterized as strengths individual learners have--relative to their population--in the cognitive abilities information processing draws on during L2 learning and performance in various contexts and at different stages. Theoretical frameworks for aptitude research, characterized in this way, have been proposed recently (Robinson, 2001c; Skehan, 2002; Sternberg, 2002). It is also now possible to 'look down' (see Deary, 2000, p. 4) from cognitive abilities for information processing to the subcomputational, physical level at which neural differences underlying abilities (see e.g., Garlick, 2002) and SLA processes (see, e.g., Chee, Soon, Lee, & Pellier, 2004; Tokowitcz & MacWhinney, in press) can be described. Correspondingly, it is possible to 'look up' from research into cognitive abilities and information processing during SLA and examine the joint contributions of these personality traits and conative factors to a more broadly defined 'aptitude' for achieving L2 learning success using techniques for multidimensional modeling (Ackerman, 1999, 2003; Shavelson & Roeser, 2002). Both of these prospects will be referred to but not treated in any substantial depth in this review.
Specifically the research reviewed in this chapter focuses on the effects of individual differences in cognitive abilities on learning prompted by intervention and manipulation at three levels of pedagogic context: (a) the level of learning condition , and the relative effectiveness of implicit, incidental and explicit processing of L2 input (see studies in Hulstijn & DeKeyser, 1997; Hulstijn & R. Ellis, 2005; and DeKeyser, 2003, N. Ellis, in press, for review); (b) the level of focus on form (FonF), and the effectiveness of a variety of techniques for inducing learner attention to language form during communicative activity (see Doughty & Williams, 1998, for review); and (c) the level of pedagogic task , and the effects of different dimensions of task demands on L2 learning and performance (see R. Ellis, 2004; Robinson, 2001b, 2003b, in press a; Skehan, 1998, 1999, for review).
Research into these areas has often sought to identify differences in the relative effectiveness of particular learning conditions, FonF...