Despite scarce empirical evidence, introducing new vocabulary in semantic categories has long been standard in second language teaching. We examined the effect of learning context on encoding, immediate recall and integration of new vocabulary into semantic memory by contrasting categorically related (novel names for familiar concepts blocked by semantic category) and unrelated (mixed semantic categories) learning contexts. Two learning sessions were conducted 24 hours apart, with each participant exposed to both contexts. Subsequently, a test phase examined picture naming, translation and picture-word interference tasks. Compared to the unrelated context, the categorically related context resulted in poorer naming accuracy in the learning phase, slower response latencies at the immediate recall tasks and greater semantic interference in the picture-word interference task (picture naming in L1 with semantically related novel word distractors). We develop a theoretical account of word learning that attributes observed differences to episodic rather than semantic memory.

尽管缺乏经验证据，但是在第二语言教学中长期以来，在语义类别中引入新词汇一直是标准。我们通过对比分类相关（被语义类别阻止的熟悉概念的新名称）和不相关（混合语义类别）学习上下文来检查学习上下文对编码、立即回忆和将新词汇整合到语义记忆中的影响。两次学习课程相隔 24 小时进行，每位参与者都接触两种环境。随后，测试阶段检查了图片命名、翻译和图片词干扰任务。与不相关的上下文相比，分类相关的上下文导致学习阶段的命名准确性较差，即时回忆任务中较慢的反应延迟和图片-单词干扰任务中更大的语义干扰（L1 中的图片命名与语义相关的新词干扰项）。我们开发了一个关于单词学习的理论解释，将观察到的差异归因于情景记忆而不是语义记忆。