The role of expertise in coping with accents during simultaneous interpreting

Abstract

Foreign-accented speech is one of the factors that add to the cognitive load exerted during conference interpreting. In the present study, we investigated the effect of different accents on speech processing during this task in addition to the respective roles played by language proficiency and expertise. We therefore designed a pupillometric study in which we tested both students and professional interpreters. The results show that, throughout the trial, the cognitive effort associated with accented speech processing, as measured by proportional pupil size relative to baseline, was greater in the case of the students. Furthermore, only the students seemed to be sensitive to the type of accented speech applied. At the same time, all the participants demonstrated a similar pupil activation pattern in each trial, which suggests the presence of a generalized ‘cognitive rhythm’ that pertains to the interpreting task. Finally, the results point to expertise rather than language proficiency as a major factor in mitigating cognitive effort in simultaneous conference interpreting.