The present study longitudinally investigates the cognitive processes of advanced L2 learners engaged in a multimedia task that elicited status-equal and status-unequal refusals in English during their study abroad. Data were collected three times by retrospective verbal report from 20 Chinese learners who were studying abroad over the course of one academic year. The results revealed that the learners reported paying increasingly more attention to sociopragmatics in context when they responded to each situation of the task. Furthermore, the study showed the effect of study abroad on the learners' perceptions of the factors affecting their pragmatic productions across the three phases. These effects were reflected by the decrease in pragmatic difficulties and the increase in pragmatic knowledge reported by the learners. This article demonstrates that using the retrospective verbal report at different points during learners' study abroad allows the examination of the changes in the cognitive processes involved in L2 pragmatic production.