ABSTRACT
This chapter is an investigation into the effects of crosslinguistic similarity and complexity on learners’ ability to recall the meanings of new words in an unrelated language. By inducing participants to analyze target word forms and meanings, the present study also tests for the effects of depth of processing (DoP) on vocabulary recall and examines whether DoP interacts with the other two factors. Results show significant but independent effects of crosslinguistic similarity and DoP. However, a closer analysis shows that successful DoP is tied to the availability of relevant prior knowledge, which is most reliable in cases of crosslinguistic similarity.
