Taxing the bilingual mind: Effects of simultaneous interpreting experience on verbal and executive mechanisms

Abstract

This paper reviews the neurocognitive particularities of subjects with sustained experience in simultaneous interpreting, a highly demanding form of bilingual processing. The literature converges into three broad empirical patterns. First, significant neurocognitive differences, including behavioral enhancements in verbal and executive domains, are observable after only one or two years of training. Second, such effects, both in interpreting students and/or professional interpreters, seem robust for crucial linguistic (e.g., translation) and executive (e.g., working memory) aspects of the activity, but not for more marginally relevant ones (e.g., conflict resolution) – suggesting that they are non-generalizable beyond directly taxed functions. Third, though more tentatively, some of the observed verbal and executive effects seem to be mutually independent and uninfluenced by other bilingual-experience-related factors (e.g., L2 competence), which could highlight their distinctive relation with interpreting practice. In sum, this particular model of expertise sheds novel light on the adaptive capacity of cognitive systems in bilinguals.

Neurocognitive signatures of phonemic sequencing in expert backward speakers

“…Importantly, too, this selective advantage for backward speech remained significant after covarying for outcomes in the verbal and visual span tasks, indicating that the subjects' behavioral superiority was likely driven by phonological skills proper rather than by general retention abilities, as described for other cases 31 . In line with evidence from other models of expert language processing 69 , this finding suggests that linguistic enhancements due to recurring practice may emerge only for specifically taxed functions, irrespective of other domain-general skills 70 . Furthermore, the observed lexicality effect (better performance in reversing words than pseudowords) suggests that the lexical route may aid reversal abilities, as reported for other phonological processes such as speech repetition 15 .…”

Cognitive and Neurocognitive Effects From the Unique Bilingual Experiences of Interpreters

“…Moreover, behavioral advantages were found to correlate with time on task, i.e., the hours of practice ( Elmer et al, 2014 ), and with years of professional experience ( Santilli et al, 2019 ). García (2014) therefore speculates that these rather task-specific skills may result in more efficient abilities in the linguistic and cognitive domain and be observable even in non-interpreting tasks, but only in restricted linguistic and cognitive subdomains (see García et al, 2019 , for review).…”

“…Dong and colleagues have investigated the effects of training in consecutive interpreting that “requires both languages to be constantly active rather than alternately inhibited” ( García et al, 2019 , p. 8). For instance, Dong and Xie (2014) found that students with more interpreting training outperformed those with little to no interpreting training in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, but not in the Flanker task.…”

“…Studies using neuroimaging technology on students enrolled in intensive training programs in interpreting have shown an increase in the volume of gray matter in regions that are involved in semantic processing, learning, motor control, and several domain-general executive functions ( Hervais-Adelman et al, 2015 ). Other research has found that SI trainees develop an increased cortical thickness in temporal, parietal, and dorsal premotor regions that are important to phonetic, lexico-semantic, and executive functions ( Hervais-Adelman et al, 2017 ) and that SI entails “increased activity in frontobasal and perisylvian regions, with maximal recruitment of linguistic and cognitive control hubs (e.g., superior temporal and prefrontal cortices) during parallel processing of input and output ( Hervais-Adelman et al, 2014 )” ( García et al, 2019 , p. 2). van de Putte et al’s (2018) study comparing interpreter trainees and translator trainees before and after their training found a significant increase of the structural connectivity in the frontal-basal ganglia subnetwork, an area typically associated with domain-general and language-specific cognitive control and in the cerebellum and the supplementary motor area, an important region for language control.…”

Interpreting: A window into bilingual processing

“…The topic of interpreter advantage is somewhat parallel to the topic of bilingual advantage. García et al (García et al, 2020) provide us a comprehensive review of the neurocognitive features of simultaneous interpreters. First, significant neurocognitive differences, including behavioral enhancements in verbal and executive domains, are observable after only one or two years of training.…”