The Relationship between Selective Attention and Simultaneous Interpreting Performance in Undergraduate Students of Translation

Abstract

Complexity of simultaneous interpreting has long attracted the interest of researchers and led them to explore different linguistic, psychological, cognitive, social, and neurological factors involved in enabling the human mind to perform such a difficult task. Within the framework of cognitive studies of interpreting, the authors of this study aimed at exploring the relationship between selective attention and interpreting performance of undergraduate students of Translation. Interpreting performance was evaluated in terms of content and presentation. A sample of 72 BA students participated in the study and completed a simultaneous interpreting and a selective attention task. Quantitative analysis of the data obtained from the participants led to the conclusion that selective attention had a direct relationship with both content and presentation of simultaneous interpreting performance in the sample as significant correlation was found to exist between the variables. The findings suggest that students with better selective attention are likely to perform better in interpreting tasks, especially in terms of the content of their performance which is concerned with completeness and accuracy of informational content of the interpreted message.