Taxing the bilingual mind: Effects of simultaneous interpreting experience on verbal and executive mechanisms. García AM., Muñoz E. & Kogan B. 2019

Taxing the bilingual mind: Effects of simultaneous interpreting experience on verbal and executive mechanisms. García AM., Muñoz E. & Kogan B. 2019

AUTORES

García AM., Muñoz E. & Kogan B.

2019
JOURNAL Language and Cognition
VOLUMEN Febrero, 2019
ABSTRACT This paper reviews the neurocognitive particularities of subjects with sustained experience in
simultaneous interpreting, a highly demanding form of bilingual processing. The literature
converges into three broad empirical patterns. First, significant neurocognitive differences,
including behavioral enhancements in verbal and executive domains, are observable after
only one or two years of training. Second, such effects, both in interpreting students and/
or professional interpreters, seem robust for crucial linguistic (e.g., translation) and executive
(e.g., working memory) aspects of the activity, but not for more marginally relevant ones (e.g.,conflict resolution) – suggesting that they are non-generalizable beyond directly taxed func-
tions. Third, though more tentatively, some of the observed verbal and executive effects

seem to be mutually independent and uninfluenced by other bilingual-experience-related fac-
tors (e.g., L2 competence), which could highlight their distinctive relation with interpreting

practice. In sum, this particular model of expertise sheds novel light on the adaptive capacity
of cognitive systems in bilinguals.

En esta revisión sistemática detallamos cómo el desarrollo de habilidades en interpretación simultánea impacta sobre diversos sistemas cognitivos en personas bilingües. En particular, la evidencia indica que las personas con experiencia en este rubro desarrollan ventajas en capacidades lingüísticas (p. ej., traducción de palabras) y ejecutivas (p. ej., memoria operativa) que son críticas para su desempeño profesional. A su vez, algunas de estas ventajas parecen establecerse luego de sólo unos meses de práctica. Estas y otras conclusiones del trabajo ofrecen nueva perspectivas sobre cómo el cerebro bilingüe se adapta en función de las experiencias particulares que enfrenta.
Donar ahora