An Empirical Study On How Working Memory Affects The Quality Of Consecutive Interpreting

Working memory is a cognitive construct underlying the ability to maintain and process a limited amount of information when doing some mentally demanding tasks.And interpreting is a complex cognitive processing task that has special requirements for the interpreter‘s memory resources.Thus it has been assumed by many researchers that working memory is crucial for interpreting.A number of studies have been conducted aiming to investigate the correlation between working memory capacity and interpreting quality,but results are fairly mixed and little attention is put on consecutive interpreting.Besides,in consecutive interpreting,notes and memory shares the function of information storage,which exerts an interactive effect.In order to test the more direct interplay between working memory capacity and consecutive interpreting quality,this study adopts consecutive interpreting without note-taking.Based on the literature,two hypotheses are developed.Hypothesis 1: there is no significant difference in working memory capacity among the student interpreters since they are at similar age,with similar education background and training in interpreting.Hypothesis 2: working memory has positive correlation with the quality of consecutive interpreting without notes.To testify the hypotheses,two tests are administered among 11 student interpreters who have accepted two-year interpreting training in Shanghai International Studies University.The first is the listening span test used to measure the working memory capacity of the participants.The second is the English-Chinese consecutive interpreting test while note-taking is prohibited.The interpreting quality is evaluated on three dimensions,including fidelity,delivery and target language quality.Hypothesis 1 is not supported by the results;significant differences of working memory capacity exist among the participants.Hypothesis 2 is supported;analysis shows that participants‘ performance on working memory tasks is significantly correlated with their performance in the interpreting task.