Cognitive load in relation to non-standard language input

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-286
Author(s):  
Michaela Albl-Mikasa ◽  
Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow ◽  
Andrea Hunziker Heeb ◽  
Caroline Lehr ◽  
Michael Boos ◽  
...  

Abstract The linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neural processes underlying simultaneous interpreting and translation have attracted widespread interest in the research community. However, an understanding of the cognitive load associated with these bilingual activities is just starting to emerge, and the underlying behavioral and physiological mechanisms are still poorly understood. In this article, we describe a promising interdisciplinary approach to assess the behavioral and physiological indices of cognitive load during interpreting and translation in laboratory and simulated workplace settings. In this context, we emphasize the importance of ecological validity and explain how comparisons between authentic non-standard input and edited English versions of the same stimuli can be used to evaluate cognitive load while controlling for the general cognitive demands associated with interpreting and translation. The perspective we present in this article might pave the way for a clearer understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting and translation as well as during the processing of English as Lingua Franca.

Interpreting ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-chien Chang ◽  
Michelle Min-chia Wu

This paper examines the use of address forms in interpreter-mediated question and answer (Q&A) sessions in international conferences. The address forms analyzed include both the names and the pronouns the questioners used to address the presenters. The data were collected from two conferences held in Taiwan during which Chinese/English simultaneous interpretation were provided. The Q&A pairs were divided into three categories: (1) bilingual/multilingual communication between questioners and presenters who spoke different languages; (2) monolingual communication between questioners and presenters who spoke the same language, (3) English-as-lingua-franca communication between questioners and presenters who spoke different language but chose to use English as a common language. The results show that (1) shifts in address forms occurred most frequently in interpreter-mediated bilingual/multilingual communication, (2) simultaneous interpreters tended to conform to target-culture conventions in their renditions of address forms, even though their decisions were still influenced by the cognitive constraints ubiquitous in the process of simultaneous interpreting.


2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Monti ◽  
Claudio Bendazzoli ◽  
Annalisa Sandrelli ◽  
Mariachiara Russo1

Abstract Parallel corpora have long been awaited in simultaneous interpreting studies in order to validate existing theories and models. The present paper illustrates the development of the European Parliament Interpreting Corpus (EPIC), an open, parallel, multilingual (English, Italian and Spanish), POS-tagged corpus of European Parliament source speeches and simultaneously-interpreted target speeches. The aim of the project is to study recurrent lexical patterns and morphosyntactical structures across all the possible language combinations and directions, and verify empirically whether different strategies can be detected when interpreting from a Germanic language into a Romance one and vice-versa, or between two Romance languages. EPIC is freely available on-line for the research community to use and contribute to.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 780-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabet Tiselius ◽  
Kayle Sneed

AbstractPrevious studies have investigated the cognitive processes of simultaneous interpreting and translation using eye-tracking. No study has yet utilized eye-tracking to investigate cognitive load and cognitive effort in dialogue interpreting. An eye-tracking study was conducted on two groups of interpreters (experienced and inexperienced) with varying language backgrounds during a staged dialogue interpreting session. The aim of the study was to explore gaze patterns in dialogue interpreting in relation to the interpreters’ action and translation direction. The results indicated there were differences in gaze patterns depending on the action and the language used. Participants averted gaze more when interpreting into the allophone language (the L2 for a majority of the participants in this study). This may indicate that interpreting into L2 in a dialogue may involve more cognitive effort than interpreting into L1. Finally, gaze patterns did not differ significantly between inexperienced and experienced dialogue interpreters.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-501
Author(s):  
Isa HES Gustafsson Jertfelt ◽  
Alice Blanchin ◽  
Sihong Li

When conducting open-ended qualitative interviews, it is important to remember that the method originates from the Western perspective. In China we encountered a number of problems when using this method, with little information on dealing with them in the literature, or if information does exist it has not attracted enough attention in the research community to be readily accessible. We therefore saw a need to uncover these difficulties, encouraging a broader discussion about these types of cross-cultural issues and how to handle them in research situations. The differences between the Chinese interview situation and the European interview situation will be presented in seven points. We will present examples and discuss potential sources for these problems and their implications for ecological validity.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin-Hung Lin ◽  
Shu-Ching Yang ◽  
Chin-Chi Lai

In this study we analyzed the role that support plays in undergraduate students' learning processes in an e-portfolio context. Three categories of support were identified and used in this study: peer, instructional, and document support. Questionnaire data from 374 undergraduate students were collected and analyzed. Results indicate that support plays a mediating role in cognitive load and learning outcomes when e-portfolios are used in a classroom setting. The results also show that e-portfolio tools increase the cognitive demands on students and that students perceive better learning outcomes in a course when they receive more support. This information could be used to improve our understanding of how educational assessment systems and learning tools should be designed and implemented.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Firdaus

Blockchain is a promising new technology, generating widespread interest, and receiving considerable attention in the research community, such as academia and industry. This interest started with the success of Bitcoin but took speed with the promise of smart contracts and a vast number of applications. While there is a broad interest in developing blockchain systems for specific use cases, there is a lack of tools to perform their evaluation and implementation decisions may hamper fast progress. This report provides the review of security and performance of public and private blockchain framework, where each of which is represented by the two well-known papers, the first is titled “On the Security and Performance of Proof of Work Blockchains” and the second paper is titled “BLOCKBENCH: A Framework for Analyzing Private Blockchains”. The first paper introduces a novel quantitative framework to analyze the security and performance implications of various consensus and network parameters of PoW blockchains. The framework allows for capture existing PoW-based deployments as well as PoW blockchain variants that are instantiated with different parameters, and to objectively compare the tradeoffs between their performance and security provisions. In the second paper, the authors describe BlockBench, the first evaluation framework for analyzing private blockchains. BlockBench measures overall and componentwise performance in terms of throughput, latency, scalability, and fault-tolerance. Next, BlockBench is used to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of three major private blockchains: Ethereum, Parity, and Hyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, there are gaps in performance among the three systems which are attributed to the design choices at different layers of the blockchain’s software stack.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Simon Borchmann ◽  
Sune Sønderberg Mortensen ◽  
Louise Tranekjær

The motivation for questioning questions arose in the research group Language, Culture and Cognition in 2018 when several members were working on material that included questions. In this work, a series of problems appeared, including: How do we classify questions based on their functions? What is the cognitive basis for questions? How do we account for the specific functions that questions serve in activity types? The problems led to consideration as to whether there was a basis for a broader discussion of questions, and when the group invited to the open symposium Questioning Questions in Language, Culture and Cognition, it turned out that there was a widespread interest within the international linguistic research community. At the symposium held at Roskilde University on November 15, 2018, 14 papers were presented, and following the research group’s call for papers for a special issue, several new proposals came along - each contributing to the classification, analysis and characteriation of questions. This indicates not only that there is a lively interest in questions, but also that there is a need to discuss and add to the existing classifications, analyses and characterisations of questions. In this issue we have gathered the 11 most relevant contributions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Nicole Saiphoo

Recently, researchers have investigated the cognitive efficiency of social comparisons young women make to thin-ideal images. However, results have been mixed and methodology problematic (e.g. low ecological validity, lack of consideration for ethnicity). The purpose of the present study was to address these issues. Ninety-six Caucasian undergraduate females were exposed to thin-ideal images. These images were presented in the context of an online shopping experience, to create a more ecologically valid context. To investigate cognitive efficiency, cognitive load was manipulated by having participants memorize the colours of the models’ clothing items. Participants did not experience a decrease in appearance satisfaction when under high cognitive load, suggesting inefficiency. In contrast, an observed increase in negative mood under high load conditions may suggest efficiency. However, potential alternative explanations for this latter result include the non-specificity of the mood measure, the context the images were presented in, and task difficulty


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Nicole Saiphoo

Recently, researchers have investigated the cognitive efficiency of social comparisons young women make to thin-ideal images. However, results have been mixed and methodology problematic (e.g. low ecological validity, lack of consideration for ethnicity). The purpose of the present study was to address these issues. Ninety-six Caucasian undergraduate females were exposed to thin-ideal images. These images were presented in the context of an online shopping experience, to create a more ecologically valid context. To investigate cognitive efficiency, cognitive load was manipulated by having participants memorize the colours of the models’ clothing items. Participants did not experience a decrease in appearance satisfaction when under high cognitive load, suggesting inefficiency. In contrast, an observed increase in negative mood under high load conditions may suggest efficiency. However, potential alternative explanations for this latter result include the non-specificity of the mood measure, the context the images were presented in, and task difficulty


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