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Interpreting
Vol. 24:1 (2022) ► pp.1–37

When two languages are competing

An ERP study of sentence processing in expert and novice interpreters

 | National Taiwan University
 | National Taiwan Normal University
 | National Taiwan Normal University
Past studies have shown that expert interpreters were better than novices at using contextual cues to anticipate upcoming information. However, whether such sensitivity to contextual cues can be traced by means of neural signatures is relatively unexplored. The present study used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) along with a language-switching paradigm – including non-switched (Chinese–Chinese, L1–L1) and switched (Chinese–English, L1–L2) conditions – to investigate whether interpreters with many years of experience, interpreters with a few years of experience and post-graduate-level interpreting students differed in the way they process contextually congruent or incongruent sentence-final target words. The results show that while the manipulations of congruency and switching independently induced a strong brain response in all three groups, the interaction between the two factors elicited different patterns across groups during 500–700 ms: (1) while a sustained congruency effect was found in the two less-experienced groups for the switched condition, such an effect was observed in the most experienced group for both switched and non-switched conditions; (2) only the least-experienced group showed a frontal negativity towards incongruent trials in the switched condition. These 200 ms transient group differences revealed that it might be possible to trace the development of interpreting ability by examining the ERP components in a language-switching setting.
Keywords: interpreting expertise, N400, PNP, language switching
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1N400 and associated cognitive functions
    • 1.2Post-N400 positivity (PNP) and associated cognitive functions
    • 1.3ERP studies on interpreting
    • 1.4The present study
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Data acquisition and preprocessing
    • 2.5Data analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Behavioral data
    • 3.2ERP data
      • 3.2.1300–500 ms
      • 3.2.2500–700 ms
      • 3.2.3700–1000 ms
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.00069.fan
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