ABSTRACT

Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting (SI) has been a focus of interest for researchers, yet very limited empirical effort has been devoted to local-level analyses that focus on sentences and sequences of neighboring sentences. The present study examines the possible effect of imported load and investigates how cognitive load affects SI performance. Here cognitive load was measured by the amount of information held in working memory, and the unit of information is labeled a ‘chunk’. A quasi-experiment was conducted involving nine professional interpreters performing one English–Chinese SI task. The results indicate that imported load transferred from the unuttered part of the previous sentence is not a powerful predictor of the SI performance of the current sentence, but current load caused by the accumulated information of the current sentence during ear–voice span (EVS) exerts a significant influence. Cognitive load is found to be negatively correlated with interpreting performance during SI, and a significant drop in SI performance occurred when local cognitive load reached four chunks. The results go against Gile’s hypothesis that imported load may affect SI performance, while lending support to the tightrope hypothesis that simultaneous interpreters work close to the limit of their cognitive capacity most of the time.

摘要

同声传译 (SI) 中的认知负荷一直是研究人员感兴趣的焦点，但专注于句子和相邻句子序列的局部分析的经验努力非常有限。本研究检查了输入负荷的可能影响，并研究了认知负荷如何影响 SI 表现。在这里，认知负荷是通过工作记忆中保存的信息量来衡量的，信息单位被标记为“块”。进行了一项准实验，涉及九名专业口译员执行一项英汉 SI 任务。结果表明，从前一个句子的未说出部分转移的导入负载不是当前句子的 SI 性能的有力预测器，但是在耳-语音跨度（EVS）期间当前句子的累积信息引起的当前负载产生显着影响。发现认知负荷与 SI 期间的解释性能呈负相关，当局部认知负荷达到四个块时，SI 性能显着下降。结果与 Gile 的假设背道而驰，即输入负载可能会影响 SI 性能，同时支持同声传译员在大多数时间接近其认知能力极限的走钢丝假设。