Testing the impact of formal interpreting training on working memory capacity: Evidence from Turkish–English students–interpreters

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

“…Moreover, results from WM tasks requiring concurrent sentential processing systematically indicate better performance in both languages for ISs than UMs at the end (Tzou et al, 2012) and even at early stages (Köpke & Nespoulous, 2006) of their training. This WM advantage was corroborated in longitudinal studies testing ISs before and after five (Antonova Ünlü & Sağın Şimşek, 2018) and four (Chmiel, 2016) semesters of practice. However, only the first of these investigations was able to show the specificity of this effect – by testing UMs at the same time-points and finding no comparable results.…”

“…First, a study on executive functions (including STM and updating tasks) revealed no differences between UMs and aspiring interpreters about to start their training (Rosiers, Woumans, Duyck & Eyckmans, 2019). Second, as seen above, longitudinal research comparing ISs before and after periods of intensive practice (and UMs at the same time points) has shown increased performance for the trainees in key SI-related functions, such as WM (Antonova Ünlü & Sağın Şimşek, 2018), in addition to structural (Hervais-Adelman et al, 2017) and functional (Hervais-Adelman et al, 2015) brain changes in critical hubs. Complementarily, various neurocognitive effects in PSIs are significantly associated with their hours of practice (Elmer, Hänggi & Jäncke, 2014) and their years of professional experience (Santilli et al, 2018), indicating that the longer the experience in SI, the greater its effects on particular cognitive systems.…”

“…The development of bilingual skills has been linked to advantages in certain executive domains – e.g., non-verbal WM (Calvo et al, 2016)– and disadvantages in certain linguistic domains – e.g., verbal fluency (Bialystok et al, 2012). However, increased dual-language processing demands associated with SI experience do not uniformly augment these effects; rather, while they seem to extend some executive advantages – e.g., in WM (Antonova Ünlü & Sağın Şimşek, 2018) – , they appear to attenuate or reverse linguistic disadvantages – e.g., in verbal fluency (Santilli et al, 2018). Therefore, the sustained demands associated with SI experience seem to involve particular trajectories of linguistic and executive adjustments which cannot be fully reduced to extensions of general bilingualism-related effects.…”

“…STM assessments (via simple span tasks) have also yielded mixed results, likely reflecting discrepancies in the stimuli used and particularities of the samples tested in each study. While Tzou et al (2012) reported better digit span for second-year ISs than UMs, the latter group was undifferentiated from beginner (Köpke & Nespoulous, 2006; Tzou et al, 2012) and advanced (Antonova Ünlü & Sağın Şimşek, 2018; Chincotta & Underwoord, 1998) ISs in various STM measures. Moreover, longitudinal evidence indicates that interpreting training can trigger improvements in STM for letters but not for digits or spatial locations (Babcock et al, 2017; Antonova Ünlü & Sağın Şimşek, 2018).…”

Cognitive and Neurocognitive Effects From the Unique Bilingual Experiences of Interpreters

“…Most of these findings have come from studies employing WM tasks that require systematic parallel processing. Antonova Ünlü and Sağın Şimşek’s (2018) longitudinal study over five semesters of training demonstrated that such training not only improved interpreting skills of trainees but also their central executive and processing capacity for WM. Similarly, Chmiel (2018) reported that interpreter training improves WM capacity, which in turn predicts interpreting performance (c.f., Rosiers et al, 2019 ).…”