Informal Digital Language Learning as a Site for Activating and Developing Intelligence

Dear Colleagues,

Second language (L2) learning increasingly unfolds across digital and informal environments that extend beyond formal classrooms. Research on informal digital language learning (IDLL) shows that learners actively regulate attention, emotion, motivation, and social interaction while engaging with diverse digital resources (Lai & Sundqvist, 2025; Lee, 2022). These processes point to the multi-layered and dynamic nature of L2 learning in contemporary contexts, where cognitive, affective, social, and technological dimensions are deeply intertwined. At the same time, intelligence is increasingly understood not as a fixed or unitary trait but as a broad, evolving set of capacities. Contemporary perspectives encompass not only cognitive abilities, but also affective, social, creative, practical, and even embodied and distributed forms of intelligence that develop through interaction with complex environments (Sternberg, 2019; van der Maas et al., 2006). From a complex dynamic systems perspective, learning emerges through ongoing interactions among linguistic, technological, social, and material systems (Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009). In digitally mediated contexts, these interactions may also involve human–AI collaboration, algorithmic mediation, and networked participation, further expanding how intelligence is enacted and developed. IDLL thus offers a particularly fertile site for examining how diverse forms of intelligence are activated, coordinated, and transformed as learners navigate multilingual, multimodal, and algorithmically structured environments.

This Special Issue, “Informal Digital Language Learning as a Site for Activating and Developing Intelligence”, addresses this gap by inviting contributions that conceptualize language learning across contexts as a site for engaging and developing diverse forms of intelligence. We adopt an inclusive perspective that views intelligence as encompassing cognitive, affective, social, creative, and technologically mediated capacities that emerge through learners’ participation in informal digital environments. This orientation aligns closely with the journal’s scope by foregrounding innovative perspectives on language learning, learner psychology, digital mediation, and sociocultural contexts.

By bringing together research on IDLL and broader conceptualizations of intelligence, this Special Issue aims to advance a more comprehensive understanding of language learning as a developmental, adaptive, and context-sensitive process. It also seeks to contribute to ongoing discussions on learner agency, self-regulation, creativity, social interaction, human–AI collaboration, and educational equity in digitally mediated environments. In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Theoretical reconceptualizations of intelligence in informal and digitally mediated language learning
• Cognitive, affective, social, and creative dimensions of intelligence in IDLL
• Self-regulation, metacognition, attention, and adaptive learning processes
• Emotional, motivational, and identity-related dynamics in informal learning environments
• Human–AI interaction and the development of distributed or augmented intelligence
• Intelligence development in AI-mediated or algorithmically structured learning environments
• Embodied, multimodal, and interactional perspectives on intelligence in language learning
• Digital inequality and uneven opportunities for developing diverse forms of intelligence
• Longitudinal, mixed-method, or person-centered approaches to developmental change in IDLL

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary approaches that bridge applied linguistics, educational psychology, cognitive science, and related fields. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Ellis, N. C., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (2009). Language as a complex adaptive system. John Wiley & Sons.

Lai, C., & Sundqvist, P. (2025). Research agenda: Synergizing in-class and out-of-class language learning with technology.Language Teaching. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026144482500014X.

Lee, J. (2022). Informal digital learning of English. Routledge.

Sternberg, R. J. (2019). A Theory of Adaptive Intelligence and Its Relation to General Intelligence.Journal of Intelligence, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence7040023.

Van Der Maas, H. L., Dolan, C. V., Grasman, R. P., Wicherts, J. M., Huizenga, H. M., & Raijmakers, M. E. (2006). A dynamical model of general intelligence: the positive manifold of intelligence by mutualism.Psychological review, 113(4), 842. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.113.4.842.

Dr. Guangxiang Liu
Dr. Mingzhe Wang
Dr. Ali Soyoof Jahromi
Guest Editors

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