Cognitive processes and interpreting expertise: Autonomous exercise of master's students

The present paper describes the results of a part of a PhD project about working memory (Baddeley & Hitch 1974; Baddeley 2000; Gerver 1975; 1976; Padilla Benítez 1995) and selective attention (Cowan 2000; Moser-Mercer 2000; Seeber 2011; Timarová et al. 2014; 2015) in the training of conference interpreters. In this experimental study, data on autonomous interpreting exercises were collected. The study group was formed of interpreting students of the master’s degree in interpreting of the University of Bologna and can be divided into two subgroups, one subgroup starting the course in 2015 (27) and the other in 2016 (22). The hypothesis was that time devoted to exercise and the type of activities done during self-study would contribute to the improvement of working memory and selective attention, which were measured by a battery of psychological tests. Before the description of empirical data, the paper includes a review of the main studies on skill acquisition (Ackerman 1988; Anderson 1995; Ericsson 2000; Von Bastian & Oberauer 2014) and on cognitive training methods in interpreter training (van Dam 1989; Dollerup & Loddegaard 1992; Benítez 2002; Gillies 2013; Andres & Behr 2015; Yenkimaleki & van Heuven 2013; 2017; Setton & Dawrant 2016a,b).