Abstract
With an intention to contribute to the issue of how language experience may influence working memory (WM), we focused on consecutive interpreting (CI), analyzed its potential links with WM functions and tested these links in a longitudinal experiment, trying to answer the specific question of how CI training may influence WM. Two comparable groups of Chinese learners of English received either CI or general second language (L2) training for one semester, and were tested before and after the training with the tasks of n-back (non-verbal updating), L2 listening span, and letter running span (verbal spans). CI performance was tested in the posttest. The results showed that (1) updating efficiency in both the pretest and posttest predicted CI performance, and CI training enhanced updating efficiency while general L2 training did not; (2) the relationship between verbal spans and CI performance was weaker (i.e., only pretest L2 listening span correlated with CI performance and predicted CI performance with marginal significance), and CI training did not make a unique contribution to these spans (i.e., no group differences). The results indicated an “interpreter advantage” in updating, which was probably due to that updating was more central in the CI task than WM spans. Theoretically, we believe that updating and CI are closely related because they share the same underlying mechanism, or more specifically updating and the recalling process in the CI task share the same attentional control process, a unique link between updating and the CI task. Methodological implications are discussed.
Highlights
Working memory (WM) is considered part of the most basic executive functions that are essential to higher level cognitive processing, including language processing (e.g., Baddeley, 2003; Diamond, 2013)
We hypothesized that the updating function of working memory (WM) was closely related to consecutive interpreting (CI) performance, and CI training could help enhance updating
With an intention to contribute to the issue of how language experience influences executive functions, the present study tried to reduce the problem of complexity in language experience, and focused on CI training and its effects on WM
Summary
Working memory (WM) is considered part of the most basic executive functions that are essential to higher level cognitive processing, including language processing (e.g., Baddeley, 2003; Diamond, 2013). In our point of view, the assumption for this line of research is that the executive functions that are most essential to a certain kind of cognitive processing (e.g., bilingual processing) tend to Consecutive Interpreting & Working Memory be most influenced by corresponding cognitive experience (e.g., bilingual experience). It is believed that when compared with monolingual processing, the executive function of inhibitory control is most essential to bilingual processing because it has been found that the bilingual’s two languages are non-selectively activated, and the bilingual has to inhibit the language not needed at the moment (e.g., Green, 1998).
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