Effects of Pace and Work Stress on Upper-Extremity Kinematic Responses in Sign Language Interpreters

Abstract

Sign language interpreting is an occupation that suffers from high levels of repetitive motion injuries (RMIs) and burnout due to the high physical and cognitive demands of the interpreting task. The objective of this research was to determine the effects of work pace and psychosocial stress on the wrist kinematics of sign language interpreting. It was found that neither pace nor stress affected mean wrist position, but increased pace resulted in a significant increase of both mean velocity and acceleration, with increases ranging from 10.7–18.6%. Increased psychosocial stress resulted in a significant increase of left-hand (non-dominant) mean velocity and acceleration, with increases ranging from 14.8–19.5%. No effect of stress was observed for the right hand. In addition, several wrist kinematic variables of interpreting exceeded previously established high risk industrial benchmarks. The results of this work support earlier research which found deleterious effects of work stress on the biomechanical responses of the lower back.