Working Memory and Articulatory Suppression Effect on Simultaneous Interpreting Performance

IRENE INJOQUE-RICLE; JUAN PABLO BARREYRO; VIRGINIA JAICHENCO

Advances in Cognitive Psychology

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Lugar: Filadelfia; Año: 2015 vol. 11 p. 56 - 63

1895-1171

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a complex bilingual verbal activity that involves the auditory perception of an oral communication and the production of a coherent discourse. One of the cognitive functions underlying SI is working memory (WM). The aim of this work was to study i) the relationship between the experience of simultaneous interpreters and WM, with and without articulatory suppression, ii) the relationship between SI performance and WM, also with and without articulatory suppression, and iii) the predictive effect of the central executive, the phonological loop and expertise on SI performance. For this purpose, four WM tasks and one SI task were administered to thirty Spanish-speaking professional English interpreters. Results showed that SI ability might be supported not only by the capacity of WM to store or process information, but also by the ability of the interpreter to cope with the articulatory suppression effect. Indexada en: Thomson Reuters, Scopus, PsychINFO, Medline, EBSCO, Ministry of Science and Higher Education list of scored journals, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), ERIH PLUS.