ORCID
0000-0002-7776-4223
Date of Award
Summer 2026
Language
English
Embargo Period
7-28-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of Psychology
Program
Cognitive Psychology
First Advisor
Jeanette Altarriba
Committee Members
Jeanette Altarriba, Gaurav Malhotra, Lotfi Sayahi
Keywords
second language, novices, vocabulary, cognates, cross-linguistic similarity, modality
Subject Categories
Cognitive Psychology
Abstract
Within the study of cross-linguistic influence, research on cognate facilitation has consistently shown that proficient bilinguals process cognates (e.g., English “sock” and German “Socke”) more efficiently than non-cognates. However, less is known about how novice adult learners may benefit from these similarities during the earliest stages of second language acquisition or how instructional interventions might facilitate this process. This dissertation addressed this gap through experiments with English-speaking adults learning German. A series of experiments examined the effects of cross-linguistic similarity and explicit cognate awareness training on vocabulary acquisition. Experiment 1A found robust similarity effects in written recall and recognition, though explicit cognate awareness training yielded limited additional benefit. Experiment 1B revealed that this advantage was driven largely by similarity-based guessing. While cognates maintained a baseline advantage, cross-experiment comparisons showed that the greatest learning gains occurred for non-cognates. Experiment 2 incorporated phonological input, which did not significantly alter outcomes. Collectively, these findings suggest that cross-linguistic similarity exerts a continuous influence on early vocabulary learning through both similarity-based inference and mechanisms consistent with facilitated encoding. These results support models of nonselective lexical activation and further suggest that, during initial acquisition, item-level similarity may exert a stronger influence on performance than the pedagogical manipulations examined here.
License
This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.
Recommended Citation
Martin, Jennifer M., "Cognate Awareness Training for Novice L2 Learners: Orthographic and Phonological Routes to Vocabulary Learning" (2026). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 531.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/531