Coordinating comprehension and production in simultaneous interpreters: Evidence from the Articulatory Suppression Effect

Abstract

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.