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Semantically related gestures facilitate language comprehension during simultaneous interpreting

Arbona, Eléonore ; Seeber, Kilian and Gullberg, Marianne LU orcid (2023) In Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 26(2). p.425-439
Abstract
Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, but do they influence language comprehension in simultaneous interpreters, and if so, is this influence modulated by simultaneous interpreting (SI) and/or by interpreting experience? In a picture-matching task, 24 professional interpreters and 24 professional translators were exposed to utterances accompanied by semantically matching representational gestures, semantically unrelated pragmatic gestures, or no gestures while viewing passively (interpreters and translators) or during SI (interpreters only). During passive viewing, both groups were faster with semantically related than with semantically unrelated gestures. During SI, interpreters showed the same result. The... (More)
Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, but do they influence language comprehension in simultaneous interpreters, and if so, is this influence modulated by simultaneous interpreting (SI) and/or by interpreting experience? In a picture-matching task, 24 professional interpreters and 24 professional translators were exposed to utterances accompanied by semantically matching representational gestures, semantically unrelated pragmatic gestures, or no gestures while viewing passively (interpreters and translators) or during SI (interpreters only). During passive viewing, both groups were faster with semantically related than with semantically unrelated gestures. During SI, interpreters showed the same result. The results suggest that language comprehension is sensitive to the semantic relationship between speech and gesture, and facilitated when speech and gestures are semantically linked. This sensitivity is not modulated by SI or interpreting experience. Thus, despite simultaneous interpreters’ extreme language use, multimodal language processing facilitates comprehension in SI the same way as in all other language processing. (Less)
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author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
gesture, multimodality, simultaneous interpreting, bilingualism, language comprehension, eye-tracking
in
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
volume
26
issue
2
pages
425 - 439
publisher
Cambridge University Press
ISSN
1366-7289
DOI
10.1017/S136672892200058X
project
Embodied bilingualism (a Wallenberg Scholar project)
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
bc2b883b-d2bf-48d1-9a91-a7f0aa8290dc
date added to LUP
2022-08-17 16:46:24
date last changed
2023-10-26 14:58:07
@article{bc2b883b-d2bf-48d1-9a91-a7f0aa8290dc,
  abstract     = {{Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, but do they influence language comprehension in simultaneous interpreters, and if so, is this influence modulated by simultaneous interpreting (SI) and/or by interpreting experience? In a picture-matching task, 24 professional interpreters and 24 professional translators were exposed to utterances accompanied by semantically matching representational gestures, semantically unrelated pragmatic gestures, or no gestures while viewing passively (interpreters and translators) or during SI (interpreters only). During passive viewing, both groups were faster with semantically related than with semantically unrelated gestures. During SI, interpreters showed the same result. The results suggest that language comprehension is sensitive to the semantic relationship between speech and gesture, and facilitated when speech and gestures are semantically linked. This sensitivity is not modulated by SI or interpreting experience. Thus, despite simultaneous interpreters’ extreme language use, multimodal language processing facilitates comprehension in SI the same way as in all other language processing.}},
  author       = {{Arbona, Eléonore and Seeber, Kilian and Gullberg, Marianne}},
  issn         = {{1366-7289}},
  keywords     = {{gesture; multimodality; simultaneous interpreting; bilingualism; language comprehension; eye-tracking}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{2}},
  pages        = {{425--439}},
  publisher    = {{Cambridge University Press}},
  series       = {{Bilingualism: Language and Cognition}},
  title        = {{Semantically related gestures facilitate language comprehension during simultaneous interpreting}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/125390012/Arbona_Seeber_Gullberg_2022.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.1017/S136672892200058X}},
  volume       = {{26}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}