The Predicting Power of Cognitive Fluency for the Development of Utterance Fluency in Simultaneous Interpreting

Abstract

Although simultaneous interpreting (SI) is generally recognized as a highly demanding cognitive activity in nature, the role of cognitive processes in SI fluency is yet to be determined. While utterance fluency refers to the set of objectively determined oral features of utterances, cognitive fluency means the speaker’s efficient mobilization and integration of underlying cognitive processes responsible for utterance production. An investigation into the relationship of the two dimensions of fluency helps to reveal the cognitive bases of interpreting. This study explores the predicting power of cognitive fluency in the utterance fluency development of L2 (English)–L1 (Chinese) SI output of trainee interpreters. Cognitive fluency was operationalized as measures of lexical access, linguistic attention control, and working memory capacity. Measures of utterance fluency were obtained through simulated SI tasks under conditions of low and high input rates. Twenty-eight trainees interpreted two speeches, one with a high input rate and the other with a low input rate, at the beginning and end of an SI training period of 13 weeks. A bilingual corpus of the participants’ SI output was built, and indicators of SI utterance fluency were annotated systematically. Utterance fluency was indexed by the speech rate, mean length of run, phonation time ratio, mean number of silent pauses, and mean number of disfluencies. Results of analyses indicated that (1) the predicting power of cognitive fluency for SI utterance fluency development was only shown under high cognitive load over a training period of 13 weeks; (2) predictors for the development of SI utterance fluency tended to be the efficiency of cognitive processes involved in the target language production stage; and (3) the inclusion of measures of working memory capacity significantly increased the predicting power of cognitive fluency for SI utterance fluency development. This study for the first time provides evidence for the role of cognitive fluency in trainee interpreters’ SI utterance fluency development, having implications for the theoretical framework of cognitive fluency and the information processing mechanism in interpreting process, as well as for interpreter aptitude tests and interpreting pedagogy.

In Scriptura Veritas? Exploring Measures for Identifying Increased Cognitive Load in Speaking and Writing

“…Numerous factors may contribute to cognitive load during language production (for examples and overviews addressing different factors influencing cognitive load see Barkaoui 2019;Bourdin and Fayol 1994;Feng and Guo 2022;Johansson 2009;Kellogg 2008;Kellogg et al 2016;Lively et al 1993;Lourdes Ortega 2009;Manchón 2020;Song and Li 2020). Existing research in this area suggests that writers' and speakers' linguistic proficiency (including factors such as producing in one's first or second/third language, as well as overall grammatical and lexical knowledge), age, and education will influence fluency during language production.…”

Delving Into the Influence of Visual Input on the Load-Related Silent Pauses During SI: What About Gestures?

“…In interpreting studies, disfluencies reflect the difficulty of the source text, such as syntactic complexity (Shen et al, 2023), dependency distance (Jiang, 2020), informational load (Kajzer-Wietrzny, 2023), or lexical density. In fact, disfluencies such as hesitations (including lengthening of vowels and filled pauses), silent pauses with extend of more than 0.3 second and interruptions of expressions (including repetitions, false starts and self-correction) have been considered as indicators of cognitive load during interpreting tasks in previous studies (Mead, 2000;Skehan, 2003;Song, 2020), as they occur when the interpreter processes complex or unfamiliar information and needs more time or attention to produce a coherent output (Jiang & Jiang, 2020;Plevoets & Defrancq, 2016). In addition, disfluencies (especially silent pauses) may indicate the cognitive strategies that interpreters use to cope with high load, such as simplification, segmentation, anticipation, or monitoring (Zhao, 2022).…”

Non-fluency and language-pair specificity in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting: A corpus-driven study

“…Fu (2013) and Yuan and Wan (2019) examined the impact of directionality on student interpreters' fluency in consecutive and sight interpreting tasks respectively, and found that directionality significantly correlates with fluency performance. Jiang and Jiang (2019) and Song et al (2021) invited student interpreters to finish sight interpreting and simultaneous interpreting tasks respectively, and concluded that maximum dependency distance and input rate have a significant impact on fluency performance. Tang (2020) proposed a framework of categorizing student interpreters' self-repairs in consecutive interpreting.…”