Research suggests new foreign language (FL) words are learned more easily if their phonology follows the phonotactic rules of the native language. Very little is known, however, about the impact of orthography on FL learning. This study investigated the cognitive mechanisms supporting the learning of words with familiar and unfamiliar orthographies. Participants took part in learning and meaning recall tasks, as well as a series of cognitive tasks (short-term and working memory tasks and tasks assessing their phonological and acoustic abilities). Orthographic and phonological familiarity judgments were collected using another sample of participants. Using a mixed-effects model, the results showed that orthographic familiarity impacted FL word learning even after controlling for phonological familiarity. However, there were no interactions with cognitive abilities.

研究表明，如果新的外语（FL）单词的音系遵循母语的音位规则，那么学习它们会更容易。然而，人们对于拼字法对 FL 学习的影响知之甚少。这项研究调查了支持熟悉和不熟悉的拼字法单词学习的认知机制。参与者参与学习和意义回忆任务，以及一系列认知任务（短期和工作记忆任务以及评估其语音和声学能力的任务）。使用另一个参与者样本收集了拼写和语音熟悉度判断。使用混合效应模型，结果表明，即使在控制了语音熟悉度之后，拼写熟悉度也会影响佛罗里达州单词学习。然而，与认知能力没有相互作用。