Cover not available

Article published In: Interpreting
Vol. 25:2 (2023) ► pp.186–210

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Simultaneous interpreting experience enhances the use of case markers for prediction in Turkish

ORCiD logo with link | Bahçeşehir University
ORCiD logo with link | Boğaziçi University
ORCiD logo with link | Boğaziçi University
Published online: 22 September 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.00085.ozk
Abstract
This study investigated individual differences in prediction during language comprehension in professional and student Turkish (A)–English (B) simultaneous interpreters as a function of simultaneous interpreting (SI) experience and working memory capacity (WMC). A Turkish visual-world eye-tracking prediction task examined whether the accusative versus the nominative case markers on the initial nouns of sentences could be used as cues to predicting an upcoming argument. The participants’ WMC was measured using an automated operation span task. We found a prediction effect (a significantly higher increase in fixations to the plausible agent with time in the accusative than in the nominative condition) for the professionals, but not for the students. WMC contributed positively to the prediction effect in the professionals. Our findings indicate an SI-related advantage for prediction in professional versus student interpreters. Importantly, the present findings revealed an SI-related advantage in a prediction task that did not require interpreting.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1SI as a potential context for training prediction in professional interpreters
    • 1.2SI as a potential task for enhancing domain-general cognitive skills
    • 1.3The present study
  • 2.Materials and methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Eye-tracking task
    • 2.3Working memory capacity
    • 2.4Data analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Prediction in professionals and students
    • 3.2Contribution of WMC to prediction in professionals and students
  • 4.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
References (72)
References
AIIC (2019). The AIIC A-B-C. [URL] (accessed 6 July 2022).
Allopenna, P. D., Magnuson, J. S. & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and Language 38 (4), 419–439. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Altmann, G. T. M. (2011). Language can mediate eye movement control within 100 milliseconds, regardless of whether there is anything to move the eyes to. Acta Psychologica 137 (2), 190–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amos, R. M. & Pickering, M. J. (2020). A theory of prediction in simultaneous interpreting. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23 (4), 706–715. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amos, R. M., Seeber, K. G. & Pickering, M. J. (2022). Prediction during simultaneous interpreting: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm. Cognition, 2201, 104987. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Babcock, L. & Vallesi, A. (2017). Are simultaneous interpreters expert bilinguals, unique bilinguals, or both? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20 (2), 403–417. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baguley, T. (2012). Serious stats: A guide to advanced statistics for the behavioral sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barr, D. J. (2008). Analyzing ‘visual world’ eye-tracking data using multilevel logistic regression. Journal of Memory and Language 59 (4), 457–474. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C. & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68 (3), 255–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67 (1), 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borovsky, A., Elman, J. L. & Fernald, A. (2012). Knowing a lot for one’s age: Vocabulary skill and not age is associated with anticipatory incremental sentence interpretation in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 112 (4), 417–436. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (2001). Lexical-functional syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brouwer, S., Özkan, D. & Küntay, A. C. (2019). Verb-based prediction during language processing: The case of Dutch and Turkish. Journal of Child Language 46 (1), 80–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, M., Salverda, A. P., Dilley, L. C. & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2011). Expectations from preceding prosody influence segmentation in online sentence processing. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 18 (6), 1189–1196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brunyé, T. T., Carney, P. A., Allison, K. H., Shapiro, L. G., Weaver, D. L. & Elmore, J. G. (2014). Eye movements as an index of pathologist visual expertise: A pilot study. PLoS ONE 9 (8), e103447. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, J. (1995). Regular morphology and the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes 10 (5), 425–455. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chernov, V. M. (1994). Message redundancy and message anticipation in simultaneous interpreting. In S. Lambert & B. Moser-Mercer (Eds.), Bridging the gap: Empirical research in simultaneous interpretation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 139–154. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christoffels, I. K., de Groot, A. M. B. & Kroll, J. F. (2006). Memory and language skills in simultaneous interpreters: The role of expertise and language proficiency. Journal of Memory and Language 54 (3), 324–345. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology 6 (1), 84–107. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García, A. M., Muñoz, E. & Kogan, B. (2019). Taxing the bilingual mind: Effects of simultaneous interpreting experience on verbal and executive mechanisms. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23 (4), 729–739. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gerver, D., Longley, P., Long, J. & Lambert, S. (1984). Selecting trainee conference interpreters: A preliminary study. Journal of Occupational Psychology 57 (1), 17–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Göksun, T., Küntay, A. C. & Naigles, L. R. (2008). Turkish children use morphosyntactic bootstrapping in interpreting verb meaning. Journal of Child Language 35 (2), 291–323. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hintz, F., Meyer, A. S. & Huettig, F. (2017). Predictors of verb-mediated anticipatory eye movements in the visual world. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 43 (9), 1352–1374. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huettig, F. & Altmann, G. T. M. (2004). The online processing of ambiguous and unambiguous words in context: Evidence from head-mounted eye-tracking. In M. Carreiras & C. Clifton (Eds.), The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eyetracking, ERP and beyond. New York: Psychology Press, 187–207.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huettig, F. & Janse, E. (2016). Individual differences in working memory and processing speed predict anticipatory spoken language processing in the visual world. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 31 (1), 80–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huettig, F. & Mani, N. (2016). Is prediction necessary to understand language? Probably not. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 31 (1), 19–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huettig, F. & Pickering, M. J. (2019). Literacy advantages beyond reading: Prediction of spoken language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23 (6), 464–475. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huettig, F., Singh, N. & Mishra, R. K. (2011). Language-mediated visual orienting behavior in low and high literates. Frontiers in Psychology 21, 2851. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Injoque-Ricle, I., Barreyro, J. P., Formoso, J. & Jaichenco, V. I. (2015). Expertise, working memory and articulatory suppression effect: Their relation with simultaneous interpreting performance. Advances in Cognitive Psychology 11 (2), 56–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ito, A., Pickering, M. J. & Corley, M. (2018). Investigating the time-course of phonological prediction in native and non-native speakers of English: A visual world eye-tracking study. Journal of Memory and Language 981, 1–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ito, A. & Sakai, H. (2021). Everyday language exposure shapes prediction of specific words in listening comprehension: A visual world eye-tracking study. Frontiers in Psychology 121, 2401. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jörg, U. (1997). Bridging the gap: Verb anticipation in German–English simultaneous interpreting. In M. Snell-Hornby, Z. Jettmarova & K. Kaindl (Eds.), Translation as intercultural communication: Selected papers from the EST Congress, Prague 1995. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 217–228. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamide, Y., Altmann, G. T. M. & Haywood, S. L. (2003). The time-course of prediction in incremental sentence processing: Evidence from anticipatory eye movements. Journal of Memory and Language 491, 133–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamide, Y., Scheppers, C. & Altmann, G. T. M. (2003). Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: Cross-linguistic evidence from German and English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 32 (1), 38–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, R. (1988). A usage-based model. In B. Rudzka-Ostyn (Ed.), Topics in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lederer, M. (1981). La traduction simultanée: Expérience et théorie: Paris: Minard Lettres Modernes.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewis, R. L., Vasishth, S. & Van Dyke, J. A. (2006). Computational principles of working memory in sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10 (10), 447–454. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lin, Y., Lv, Q. & Liang, J. (2018). Predicting fluency with language proficiency, working memory, and directionality in simultaneous interpreting. Frontiers in Psychology 9 (1543). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liu, Y., Hintz, F., Liang, J. & Huettig, F. (2022). Prediction in challenging situations: Most bilinguals can predict upcoming semantically-related words in their L1 source language when interpreting. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liu, M., Schallert, D. L. & Carroll, P. J. (2004). Working memory and expertise in simultaneous interpreting. Interpreting 6 (1), 19–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lozano-Argüelles, C. & Sagarra, N. (2021). Interpreting experience enhances the use of lexical stress and syllabic structure to predict L2 word endings. Applied Psycholinguistics 42 (5), 1135–1157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matsumoto, H., Terao, Y., Yugeta, A., Fukuda, H., Emoto, M., Furubayashi, T., Okano, T., Hanajima, R. & Ugawa, Y. (2011). Where do neurologists look when viewing brain CT images? An eye-tracking study involving stroke cases. PLoS ONE 6 (12), e28928. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mishra, R. K., Singh, N., Pandey, A. & Huettig, F. (2012). Spoken language-mediated anticipatory eye-movements are modulated by reading ability: Evidence from Indian low and high literates. Journal of Eye Movement Research 5 (1). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moser-Mercer, B., Frauenfelder, U. H., Casado, B. & Künzli, A. (2000). Searching to define expertise in interpreting. In B. Englund Dimitrova & K. Hyltenstam (Eds.), Language processing and simultaneous interpreting: Interdisciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özge, D., Küntay, A. & Snedeker, J. (2019). Why wait for the verb? Turkish speaking children use case markers for incremental language comprehension. Cognition 1831, 152–180. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özge, D., Marinis, T. & Zeyrek, D. (2013). Object-first orders in Turkish do not pose a challenge during processing. In U. Özge (Ed.), Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 269–280.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Padilla, P., Bajo, M. T., Cañas, J. J. & Padilla, F. (1995). Cognitive processes of memory in simultaneous interpretation. In J. Tommola (Ed.), Topics in interpreting research. Turku: University of Turku Centre for Translation and Interpreting, 61–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Padilla, F., Bajo, M. T. & Macizo, P. (2005). Articulatory suppression in language interpretation: Working memory capacity, dual tasking and word knowledge. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 8 (3), 207–219. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. [URL] (accessed 6 July 2022).
Riccardi, A. (1996). Language-specific strategies in simultaneous interpreting. In C. Dollerup & V. Appel (Eds.), Teaching translation and interpreting 31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 213–222. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A. & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user’s guide. Pittsburgh: Psychology Software Tools Inc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seeber, K. G. & Kerzel, D. (2011). Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting: Model meets data. International Journal of Bilingualism 16 (2), 228–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Setton, R. (2005). So what is so interesting about simultaneous interpreting? Skase Journal of Translation and Interpretation 1 (1), 70–84.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Signorelli, T. M., Haarmann, H. J. & Obler, L. K. (2011). Working memory in simultaneous interpreters: Effects of task and age. International Journal of Bilingualism 16 (2), 198–212. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stavrakaki, S., Megari, K., Kosmidis, M. H., Apostolidou, M. & Takou, E. (2012). Working memory and verbal fluency in simultaneous interpreters. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology 34 (6), 624–633. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steedman, M. & Baldridge, J. (2011). Combinatory categorial grammar. In R. D. Borsley & K. Börjars (Eds.), Non-transformational syntax. Oxford: Blackwell, 181–224. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M. & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science 268 (5217), 1632–1634. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Timarová, Š., Čeňková, I., Meylaerts, R., Hertog, E., Szmalec, A. & Duyck, W. (2015). Simultaneous interpreting and working memory capacity. In A. Ferreira & J. W. Schwieter (Eds.), Psycholinguistic and cognitive inquiries into translation and interpreting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 101–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turner, M. L. & Engle, R. W. (1989). Is working memory capacity task dependent? Journal of Memory and Language 281, 127–154. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tzou, Y. Z., Eslami, Z. R., Chen, H. C. & Vaid, J. (2011). Effect of language proficiency and degree of formal training in simultaneous interpreting on working memory and interpreting performance: Evidence from Mandarin–English speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism 16 (2), 213–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Unsworth, N., Heitz, R. P., Schrock, J. C. & Engle, R. W. (2005). An automated version of the operation span task. Behavior Research Methods 37 (3), 498–505. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wen, H. & Dong, Y. (2019). How does interpreting experience enhance working memory and short-term memory? A meta-analysis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 31 (8), 769–784. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yudes, C., Macizo, P. & Bajo, T. (2011). The influence of expertise in simultaneous interpreting on non-verbal executive processes. Frontiers in Psychology 2 (309). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yudes, C., Macizo, P., Morales, L. & Bajo, M. T. (2013). Comprehension and error monitoring in simultaneous interpreters. Applied Psycholinguistics 34 (5), 1039–1057. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Hodzik, Ena, Deniz Özkan & Ebru Diriker
2025. Simultaneous interpreting experience enhances semantic prediction in Turkish. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 37:4 ► pp. 627 ff. DOI logo
Hodzik, Ena, Semra Özdemir, Nesrin Conker & Orhan Bilgin
2024. Strategic syntactic restructuring during simultaneous interpreting from Turkish into English. Meta 69:1 ► pp. 242 ff. DOI logo
Amos, Rhona M., Kilian G. Seeber & Martin J. Pickering
2023. Student interpreters predict meaning while simultaneously interpreting - even before training. Interpreting. International Journal of Research and Practice in Interpreting 25:2 ► pp. 211 ff. DOI logo
Hodzik, Ena
2023. Predictive processes in interpreters. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 6:2 ► pp. 141 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue