Attention Network in Interpreters: The Role of Training and Experience

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship found between interpreting training and experience and the attentional network components: Alerting, orienting, and executive attention using the Attention Network Test (ANT). In the current study we tested three groups of interpreting students, translation students, and professional interpreters as specific forms of multilingual expertise. The student groups were tested longitudinally at the beginning and the end of their Master’s programme. The professional interpreters were tested only one point in time. The results showed different attention network dynamics for the interpreting students compared to the translation students regarding alertness and executive network. First, the interpreting students showed a higher conflict effect when the alert cue was presented as well as a reduced accuracy compared to translation students. Second, the interpreting training had less effect on alerting than the translation training. Finally, two student groups showed a faster response time in conflict effect than the professional interpreters. In contrast, the professional interpreters scored a higher accuracy than two-student groups specifically in an incongruent alert condition, which confirms that they used a different responding strategy.

Individual Variation and the Bilingual Advantage—Factors that Modulate the Effect of Bilingualism on Cognitive Control and Cognitive Reserve

“…In future research, the inclusion of a control group for professional interpreters is recommended by the researchers in order to be able to investigate the effect of long-term interpreting experience on the attention network. This study [25] makes clear that the level of L2 proficiency and the amount of daily use of the two languages seem to be important factors that affect executive functioning (including cognitive control).…”

“…So far, small study samples have been often used in research on the bilingual advantage in cognitive control and, to a lesser degree, in research on bilingualism and the cognitive reserve hypothesis. Furthermore, whether the bilingual advantage in cognitive control and the contribution to cognitive reserve are mainly limited to extremely proficient bilinguals that use both languages at a professional level the whole day, like interpreters, [25] and to multilingual individuals who have to switch and suppress languages extensively to a larger extent than bilinguals should be explicitly investigated [34]. Last, but not least, the use of longitudinal designs is highly recommended because L2 learning is a complex, dynamic process [15].…”

“…In the second original study conducted by Nour and colleagues [25], the authors used the Attention Network Test (ANT) [26] to investigate the relation between interpreting training and experience and attentional network components (e.g., alerting, orienting, and executive attention [27]). Previous research has shown bilinguals to outperform monolinguals in cognitive control [10]; however, do extremely proficient bilinguals, like professional interpreters, perform similarly?…”

“…In contrast to the five original studies on the relation between bilingualism and cognitive control in which adults were investigated [22,25,28,31,34], Haft and colleagues [36] investigated a group of young children. They were interested in the possible associations between bilingualism and cognitive flexibility-a relationship that has shown mixed findings in prior literature [37,38].…”

Individual Variation and the Bilingual Advantage - Factors that Modulate the Effect of Bilingualism on Cognitive Control and Cognitive Reserve

“…So far, small study samples have been often used in research on the bilingual advantage in cognitive control and, to a lesser degree, in research on bilingualism and the cognitive reserve hypothesis. Furthermore, whether the bilingual advantage in cognitive control and the contribution to cognitive reserve are mainly limited to extremely proficient bilinguals that use both languages at a professional level the whole day, like interpreters, [25] and to multilingual individuals who have to switch and suppress languages extensively to a larger extent than bilinguals should be explicitly investigated [34]. Last, but not least, the use of longitudinal designs is highly recommended because L2 learning is a complex, dynamic process [15].…”