The expression of manner has been extensively studied in the case of motion event descriptions, unveiling significant typological differences between satellite-framed and verb-framed languages and cognitive differences between speakers of these languages. However, far from being restricted to this semantic domain, the expression of manner extends to other types of event descriptions and across virtually all verb classes. In this paper, by considering all the means of expressing manner and grounding our research in a domain-independent definition of this component, we investigate the expression and the transfer of manner under high cognitive pressure as evidenced by corpus data from French–English (FE) and English–French (EF) simultaneous interpreting. Unexpectedly, both French and English displayed an overall cross-domain preference for the verbal-lexical coding of manner in event descriptions, while still differing in the degree to which it was favored. In addition, although our study does not allow a direct measure of cognitive load, the FE interpreters transfer more manner from the source to the target speeches than the EF interpreters do, despite high pressure on cognitive resources, supporting the claim that manner can be cognitively more salient and accessible for English than for French speakers, not only in the domain of motion but also at a more general level, potentially in any semantic domain.

Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, but do they influence language comprehension in simultaneous interpreters, and if so, is this influence modulated by simultaneous interpreting (SI) and/or by interpreting experience? In a picture-matching task, 24 professional interpreters and 24 professional translators were exposed to utterances accompanied by semantically matching representational gestures, semantically unrelated pragmatic gestures, or no gestures while viewing passively (interpreters and translators) or during SI (interpreters only). During passive viewing, both groups were faster with semantically related than with semantically unrelated gestures. During SI, interpreters showed the same result. The results suggest that language comprehension is sensitive to the semantic relationship between speech and gesture, and facilitated when speech and gestures are semantically linked. This sensitivity is not modulated by SI or interpreting experience. Thus, despite simultaneous interpreters’ extreme language use, multimodal language processing facilitates comprehension in SI the same way as in all other language processing.

Prediction is an important part of language processing. An open question is to what extent people predict language in challenging circumstances. Here we tested the limits of prediction by asking bilingual Dutch native speakers to interpret Dutch sentences into their English counterparts. In two visual world experiments, we recorded participants’ eye movements to co-present visual objects while they engaged in interpreting tasks (consecutive and simultaneous interpreting). Most participants showed anticipatory eye movements to semantically-related upcoming target words in their L1 source language during both consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. A quarter of participants during simultaneous interpretation however did not move their eyes, an extremely unusual participant behaviour in visual world studies. Overall, the findings suggest that most people predict in the source language under challenging interpreting situations. Further work is required to understand the causes of the absence of (anticipatory) eye movements during simultaneous interpretation in a substantial subset of individuals.

People make comprehension easier by predicting upcoming language. We might therefore expect prediction to occur during the extremely difficult task of simultaneous interpreting. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical foundations of this premise. It reviews accounts of prediction during comprehension in both monolinguals and bilinguals, and discusses these theories in light of experimental data (e.g., using the visual-world paradigm). It considers how these accounts may be applied to the unique and ecologically valid context of simultaneous interpreting, when two languages are used concurrently, one overtly engaging the comprehension system, and the other overtly engaging the production system. It then posits a role for the production system in prediction during comprehension and develops a theoretical framework for prediction-by-production in simultaneous interpreting that has implications for our understanding of prediction during language comprehension.

Simultaneous interpreting is a complex cognitive task that requires the concurrent execution of multiple processes: listening, comprehension, conversion of a message from one language to another, speech production, and self-monitoring. This requires the deployment of an array of linguistic and cognitive control mechanisms that must coordinate the various brain systems implicated in handling these tasks. How the brain handles this challenge remains an open question, and recent brain imaging investigations have begun to complement the theories based on behavioural data. fMRI studies have shown that simultaneous interpreting engages a network of brain regions encompassing those implicated in speech perception and production, language switching, self-monitoring, and selection. Structural imaging studies have been carried out that also indicate modifications to a similar set of structures. In the present paper, we review the extant data and propose an integrative model of simultaneous interpreting that piggybacks on existing theories of multilingual language control.

This paper reviews the neurocognitive particularities of subjects with sustained experience in simultaneous interpreting, a highly demanding form of bilingual processing. The literature converges into three broad empirical patterns. First, significant neurocognitive differences, including behavioral enhancements in verbal and executive domains, are observable after only one or two years of training. Second, such effects, both in interpreting students and/or professional interpreters, seem robust for crucial linguistic (e.g., translation) and executive (e.g., working memory) aspects of the activity, but not for more marginally relevant ones (e.g., conflict resolution) – suggesting that they are non-generalizable beyond directly taxed functions. Third, though more tentatively, some of the observed verbal and executive effects seem to be mutually independent and uninfluenced by other bilingual-experience-related factors (e.g., L2 competence), which could highlight their distinctive relation with interpreting practice. In sum, this particular model of expertise sheds novel light on the adaptive capacity of cognitive systems in bilinguals.

Are simultaneous interpreters subject to the central processing bottleneck, which can postpone the reaction time and impair the performance of another concurrent task, during word production? Moreover, is there any difference between interpreters, bilinguals and monolinguals in the word production bottleneck? In this study, professional simultaneous interpreters, proficient bilinguals and monolinguals performed a dual task consisting of a picture naming task in sentence context (Task 1) and a pitch tone discrimination task (Task 2). The results show that interpreters are also subject to the central processing bottleneck during word production, and there is no significant difference between the three groups in the duration of the word production bottleneck. Unexpected differences in performance were found between English–Asian language and English–European language pairs within the interpreter group, but not within the bilingual group, showing that European-language interpreters were as fast as monolinguals in lexical access, and faster than Asian-language interpreters and bilinguals.

This study aimed to investigate the capacity of coordinating comprehension and production processes and the role of phonological working memory in simultaneous interpreting. To this end we evaluated the Articulatory Suppression (AS) effect in three groups of participants, monolingual controls, students of interpreting and professional interpreters. Three variables were examined, the material to be studied (words, pseudo-words), the complexity of the articulations (simple, complex) and the articulatory rate (participants produced their speech at their own rate). Monolingual controls showed AS effect in all study conditions; students of interpreting showed AS effect in complex study conditions and professional interpreters showed AS effect only when they studied pseudo-words and produced complex articulations. These results suggest that coordinating comprehension and production processes in interpreters is mediated by the retrieval of lexical–semantic information and the distribution of the speech.