Interpreters – experts in careful listening and efficient encoding? Findings of a prose recall test

Abstract

Research Questions: The purpose of the present experiment was to study interpreters’ recall of spoken prose. Design: The prose recall of simultaneous and consecutive interpreters was compared to that of foreign language teachers and non-linguistic experts. The professional experience of participants (21–24 participants in each group) was 10 years as a aminimum. The auditory presentation of the prose passage to be recalled, divided into eleven speech sequences, resembled the working conditions of interpreters. Data: Transcripted prose recall recordings were analysed quantitatively through an idea unit measure and qualitatively through meaning-based expressions. Findings: The foreign language expert groups outperformed the non-linguistic experts in both quantitative and qualitative measures. Additionally, compared to foreign language teachers, interpreters indicated a better recall of time expressions and topic sentences, as well as of complicated emotional and causal expressions. The explanation for these findings could indicate expertise-dependent tendencies: possibly a continuous practising of careful listening and the demand for a quick comprehension of the source text under the extreme time pressure of interpreters’ work leads to better results in prose recall. However, the findings can only be generalized to a limited extent because the prose passage used contained only one or two expressions of each type studied in the qualitative analysis. Originality: The study differs from previous studies in that the memory of interpreters, and especially of consecutive interpreters, was studied for the first time with a prose recall measure. Significance: The prose recall test revealed that the abilities of careful listening and effective comprehension of coherence and causality seem to play a significant role in explaining memory functions of simultaneous and consecutive interpreters compared to those of foreign language teachers and non-linguistic experts.