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Basic skills in a complex task: A graphical model relating memory and lexical retrieval to simultaneous interpreting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2004

INGRID K. CHRISTOFFELS ,
ANNETTE M. B. DE GROOT  and
LOURENS J. WALDORP
INGRID K. CHRISTOFFELS
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
ANNETTE M. B. DE GROOT
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
LOURENS J. WALDORP
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Abstract

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a complex skill, where language comprehension and production take place at the same time in two different languages. In this study we identified some of the basic cognitive skills involved in SI, focusing on the roles of memory and lexical retrieval. We administered a reading span task in two languages and a verbal digit span task in the native language to assess memory capacity, and a picture naming and a word translation task to tap the retrieval time of lexical items in two languages, and we related performance on these four tasks to interpreting skill in untrained bilinguals. The results showed that word translation and picture naming latencies correlate with interpreting performance. Also digit span and reading span were associated with SI performance, only less strongly so. A graphical models analysis indicated that specifically word translation efficiency and working memory form independent subskills of SI performance in untrained bilinguals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , December 2003 , pp. 201 - 211
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2003

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Footnotes

The authors like to thank Maya Misra, René Zeelenberg, Jeroen Raaijmakers and the reviewers of this manuscript for their helpful comments. We also thank Gerda Boven and Will Wintjes of the Faculteit Tolk-Vertaler, Hogeschool Maastricht, and Marisa Stoffers for rating SI performance. I. K. Christoffels and L. J. Waldorp were supported by grants (575-21-011 and 575-25-013) from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) foundation for Behavioral and Educational Sciences. Portions of this research were presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Bilingualism in Bristol, UK, April 2001.