Analysis of speech rhythm and heart rate as indicators of stress on student interpreters

Abstract

Stress is assumed to be intrinsic to interpreting and the ability to manage it a presumed predictor of performance. And yet, empirical research on the role of stress in interpreting has remained scarce. This study explores the impact of stress and anxiety on the academic scores, heart rate (HR) and speech rhythm of 23 student interpreters in a liaison interpreting task. Participants' stress and anxiety are measured using HR measures and the STAI test. Their speech rhythm is automatically analyzed through different indexes deriving from the variability of syllabic intervals. Results show that students' grades negatively correlate with their levels of state anxiety, which are, in turn, significantly related to their rhythmic parameters in L1-L2 interpreting. Greater rhythmic variability correlates with students' lower examination scores when speech is delivered into their L2. A significant increase in mean HR is reported during the interpreting task phase as compared with baseline and recovery phase, suggesting that HR was a sensitive marker to detect the students' stress response, but not to the level of influencing performance. Results point to the need to triangulate different measures to obtain a complete picture of how stress and anxiety may impact interpreting performance.

Exploring objective measures for assessing team performance in healthcare: an interview study

“…Research on the unobtrusive measurement of team members' physiological parameters (biosignals) suggests that an additional source of data can provide valuable information about team processes and unobservable states, such as stress levels, and allow objective assessments of relevant parameters in real time: team physiological dynamics (Kazi et al, 2021;Hałgas et al, 2022). This endeavor is in line with the growing recognition of the multidimensional nature of effective teamwork, highlighting the benefits of considering both visible behaviors and underlying physiological responses (Rojo López et al, 2021). By monitoring physiological signals such as HRV, researchers can assess the arousal, attention, and emotional states of team members during training or real-life scenarios.…”

“…All of the listed measures ( Figure 1 ) have already received some attention in research on team performance assessment in different domains ( Elkins et al, 2009 ; Guastello and Peressini, 2017 ). For example, there is evidence suggesting that team performance correlates with movement patterns ( Calabrese et al, 2021 ) and several physiological measures such as EDA ( Pijeira Díaz et al, 2016 ), ECG ( Rojo López et al, 2021 ), eye-tracking ( He et al, 2021 ), as well as attention ( Mahanama et al, 2022 ). In the majority of these papers, team performance has been inferred using 1–2 measures, although the use of multiple modalities in one measurement would likely add value to the evaluation of team performance ( Hałgas et al, 2022 ).…”

Under Pressure? A Study of Heart Rate and Heart-Rate Variability Using SmarTerp

“…For instance, Rojo & Naranjo (2021) show that negative affect and stress levels of translation students were higher after simply reading an emotionally charged text than after translating it. Other studies, such as Rojo, Cifuentes & Espín (2021), Rojo, Foulquié, Espín &Martínez (2021), andRojo, Cifuentes & have shown that attention focus while translating can also modulate the participants' physiological response to emotional stress (e.g., cortisol or heart rate).…”

Self-efficacy as a protective factor when translating under time pressure

“…Most of the studies on the effects of time pressure which have used physiological and self-reported measures have focused on interpreting (e.g., Korpal, 2016;Korpal & Jankoviak, 2021;Rojo López, Foulquié-Rubio, Espín López, & Martínez Sánchez, 2021) whereas scarce research attention has been paid on written translation. Over the last two decades, translation research, mainly through key-logging and eye-tracking instruments, has investigated its role on the different translation stages (Jensen 1999(Jensen , 2000, translators' fixations on source and target texts (Sharmin et al, 2008), and written translation product quality (De Rooze, 2003;Ghobadi et al, 2017;Kourouni, 2012), results up to date being far from conclusive.…”