Chapter 33
The Intense Bilingual Experience of Interpreting and Its Neurocognitive Consequences
Yanping Dong,
Fei Zhong,
Yanping Dong
Search for more papers by this authorYanping Dong,
Fei Zhong,
Yanping Dong
Search for more papers by this authorBook Editor(s):John W. Schwieter,
Michel Paradis,
John W. Schwieter
Search for more papers by this authorMichel Paradis
Search for more papers by this authorSummary
Interpreting experience is an intense bilingual experience. Since the task of interpreting places an intense and unique demand on the function of working memory (WM), the question of how interpreting experience affects WM arises. A dozen studies have been published on the topic of interpreter advantage in WM, with most of them supporting the existence of this advantage in one way or another. This chapter describes most of them, and explains why some of the findings are a little mixed and what could be done in the future. Professional interpreters are generally older than novice or student interpreters, and research on individual differences in WM shows that WM capacity declines as a function of age. The typical tools used to explore how interpreting experience influences cognitive flexibility are the colour-shape task and the Wisconsin card sorting task (WCST), although again no task is process pure.
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