Interpreter Advantages In Working Memory And Short-term Memory

Since interpreting depends heavily on working memory(WM)and short-term memory(STM),interpreting training/experience has been assumed to be able to give interpreters an edge over non-interpreters in WM and STM.However,despite threedecade studies of this issue,there is still no consensus on an interpreter advantage in WM and STM.To be specific,research on interpreter advantages in STM and WM mainly focused on three aspects: STM span advantage(measured by simple span task,i.e.,letter/word/matrix span task),WM span advantage(measured by complex span task,i.e.,reading/operation/symmetry span task)and WM updating advantage(measured by n-back task).Among them,studies on WM updating have reached consensus as all four available studies reported an interpreter advantage in WM updating(in either student interpreter or expert interpreter).Nonetheless,there is still no consensus in the literature on the existence of interpreter advantages in WM and STM spans.To resolve the controversy in WM and STM spans,we applied a three-level metaanalytic model and synthesized the comparisons of interpreters and bilingual noninterpreters in WM and STM span tasks using 45 effect sizes from 10 independent studies.With the included ten studies,we conducted two analyses: firstly,the present meta-analysis synthesized the 45 effect size data and yielded a synthesized overall effect,aiming to determine the presence/absence and magnitude of the interpreter advantages in WM and STM;secondly,we conducted moderator analyses to find out how the interpreter expertise level and the type of memory task modulate the presence/absence and magnitude of such advantages.Results from the three-level meta-analytic model revealed significant interpreter advantages in both WM and STM span tasks.Such advantages were more expressed in verbal span tasks than in numerical/letter span tasks and spatial span tasks,though the moderating effect was not statistically significant.Moreover,the interpreter expertise level also significantly modulated the presence of such interpreter advantages,with no advantage in beginner student interpreters and no difference in the advantages between intermediate and expert interpreters.Therefore,both the systematic overview and the meta-analysis lend support to the theoretical presupposition on interpreter advantages in WM and STM.We conclude that the available evidence from the present study indeed provides systematic support for the notion that interpreting experience can bring an additional benefit to WM and STM than the experience of bilingualism.Implications for interpreting training and bilingual advantages are discussed.