| Consecutive interpretation (CI) is a kind of professional activities that needs special memory capability. During CI, the interpreters have no time or no chance to comprehend the source information more than once. They must carry out a series of tasks of information processing, including source language listening, representation, comprehension and memorization, as well as target language organization and expression. These tasks bring great pressure on the interpreters'memory capability so that the excellent memory capability becomes essential for the success of the interpretation activities.Owing to the special requirement of the memory capability in the interpretation activities, the relationship between the memory capability of the language information and the interpretation activities has always been one of the hot research topics since 1960s. Scholars continuously deepen their recognition towards the profound interpretation cognitive processing. As a result, with the promotion of memory researches in the related areas such as cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, a lot of achievements in the field of the interpretation memory research has been got. All these achievements further testify the interaction between the memory capability and the interpretation activities, and are beneficial to promote the realistic interpretation effects and advance the reform and perfection of the interpretation teaching and training.However, the capacity of the traditionally defined working memory based on the short term memory (STM) is seven-plus-or-minus-two memory blocks and the duration of the storage is usually no more than 30 seconds. The traditional working memory capacity is difficult to meet the large quantity of the information of one paragraph in CI. In order to explain the greatly expanded working memory capacity of consecutive interpreters and why they can still remember the information of the source speech even after the end of interpretation, Anders Ericsson and Walter Kintsch put forward the new concept of "long-term working memory" (LT-WM). LT-WM combines the working memory and the long term memory (LTM) to provide more immediately available resources for the online work of the working memory by the benefit of the active information in LTM.Because the traditional working memory can't explain the extraordinary memory capacity of the interpreters, this paper makes an attempt to adapt LT-WM theory to the study of memory in CI, and this theory is rarely applied to interpretation research. It is proposed in this study that if the related knowledge of the interpretation materials is stored in the interpreters'LTM, they would do better when they retrieve the information. In other words, the interpreters store the information they heard in LTM and keep a little information in the working memory when they recall, which plays the positive role of retrieving and reactivating the information stored in LTM before. Therefore, the main research aim in this paper is to testify the working memory capacity extension in CI based on the LT-WM theory.In the analyses of LTM in CI, two requirements are discussed, that is, large amounts of related information and familiarity with the activity. For the analyses of the functions of the LT-WM, an empirical study is made to give a vivid account of the influence of the LT-WM on the quality of the information recall for the success of CI. Two tests are carried out in this study and 20 postgraduates majoring in English language and literature are invited to take part in this study. They are required to listen to one text in each test. In test one, the text is the summary of the novel "Pride and Prejudice", and in test two, the text is the descriptions of the scientific exhibition of the future electronic car. All the subjects are familiar with the former and unfamiliar with the latter, in other words, the subjects have LTM of the first text and haven't LTM of the second one. After listening, they are required to memorize and choose the correct answers under the direction. While listening, they can take notes but have no chance to look at the test papers, for the aim of the tests is to testify their memory capability but not their ability of listening comprehension.Then, through analyses of the collected data, three conclusions are made:1) Interpreters can memorize more information when they deal with the speeches that they have LT-WM reservation; 2) LT-WM and its training can not only strengthen interpreting capability but also improve the accuracy and the stability of interpretation; 3) The best workload for general interpreters dealing with familiar materials is about 7sentences and 5 sentences when they deal with unfamiliar materials. As proved above that TL-WM can extend the interpreters'memory capacity, it is also verifies that LT-WM training plays a crucial role to increase the workload of interpretation from 5 sentences to 7 sentences so as to shorten pause times in the whole process of the interpretation.In this study, the main theoretical foundations are Baddley's Working Memory Model mostly used for the researches in this area and Ericsson and Kintsch's LT-WM theory recently proposed in the cognitive psychology. In this paper, comparative study has been done according to the experiment. It has been found the unique functions of the LT-WM. Therefore, the importance of the interpretation training and the three methods to advance memory, visualizing memory, outlining memory and reasoning memory, are proposed in the following chapter.Recently, more and more advancements in cognitive psychology are applied in the study of the interpretation and more and more experiments have been done to verify the relationship between the working memory and the interpretation. The development of cognitive psychology provides not only theoretical perspectives, but also valuable approaches for the study of the interpretation. The future development of interpretation study will take on various looks with the integration with other mainstream subjects and become more diversified.
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