The effect of cognitive load on simultaneous interpreting performance: an empirical study at the local level

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting (SI) has been a focus of interest for researchers, yet very limited empirical effort has been devoted to local-level analyses that focus on sentences and sequences of neighboring sentences. The present study examines the possible effect of imported load and investigates how cognitive load affects SI performance. Here cognitive load was measured by the amount of information held in working memory, and the unit of information is labeled a ‘chunk’. A quasi-experiment was conducted involving nine professional interpreters performing one English–Chinese SI task. The results indicate that imported load transferred from the unuttered part of the previous sentence is not a powerful predictor of the SI performance of the current sentence, but current load caused by the accumulated information of the current sentence during ear–voice span (EVS) exerts a significant influence. Cognitive load is found to be negatively correlated with interpreting performance during SI, and a significant drop in SI performance occurred when local cognitive load reached four chunks. The results go against Gile’s hypothesis that imported load may affect SI performance, while lending support to the tightrope hypothesis that simultaneous interpreters work close to the limit of their cognitive capacity most of the time.