We investigated how previous languages and learner individual differences impact L3 word knowledge. The participants were 93 L1-Polish learners of L2-English and L3-Italian. We tested participants’ knowledge of 120 L3-Italian words: 40 L2–L3 cognates, 40 L1–L2–L3 cognates, and 40 non-cognates, controlled for many item-related variables. The knowledge and online processing of the L3 words were measured by a test inspired by the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale and a lexical decision task (LDT), respectively. The results revealed that L1–L2–L3 cognates were known better than L2–L3 cognates, but L2–L3 cognates did not differ from non-cognates. Processing advantage was observed only for low-frequency triple cognates. Moreover, cognitive aptitudes predicted the speed of responding to the keywords in the LDT. However, they did not predict participants’ performance on the vocabulary test, where L3 proficiency effects prevailed. Our results suggest that L1–L2–L3 similarity is more conducive to learning than single-sourced L2–L3 similarity.

中文翻译：

---

累积的 L1-L2-L3 词汇相似性与 L2-L3 词汇相似性：什么对学习者的 L3 单词知识和 L3 单词处理的影响更大？

我们调查了以前的语言和学习者的个体差异如何影响 L3 单词知识。参与者是 93 名 L2-英语和 L3-意大利语的 L1-Polish 学习者。我们测试了参与者对 120 个 L3-意大利语单词的了解程度：40 个 L2-L3 同源词、40 个 L1-L2-L3 同源词和 40 个非同源词，控制了许多与项目相关的变量。L3 单词的知识和在线处理分别通过受词汇知识量表和词汇决策任务 （LDT） 启发的测试来衡量。结果显示，L1-L2-L3 同源词比 L2-L3 同源词更易辨识，但 L2-L3 同源词与非同源词没有差异。仅对低频三元同源词观察到加工优势。此外，认知能力预测了对 LDT 中关键字的响应速度。然而，他们没有预测参与者在词汇测试中的表现，其中 L3 熟练度效应占主导地位。我们的结果表明，L1-L2-L3 相似性比单一来源的 L2-L3 相似性更有利于学习。