Processes and Mechanisms of Bilingual Control: Insights from Monolingual Task Performance Extended to Simultaneous Interpretation

Annette M. B. de Groot; Ingrid K. Christoffels

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Journal of Translation Studies ›› 2007, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (1) : 17-41.

Processes and Mechanisms of Bilingual Control: Insights from Monolingual Task Performance Extended to Simultaneous Interpretation

Annette M. B. de Groot, Ingrid K. Christoffels

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Department of Psychology University of Amsterdam Roetersstraat 15 1018 WB Amsterdam The Netherlands;
Leiden University Leiden University Institute for Psychological Research (LUIPR) — Cognitive Psychology Unit & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) P.O. Box 9555 2300 RB Leiden The Netherlands

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Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam. Her researches focus on the nature of language representation in bilinguals (including interpreters) and she has many scholarly publications in this area. For example, Tutorials in Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Perspectives (co-edited with J. F. Kroll, 1997); “The cognitive study of translation and interpretation: Three approaches”, in J. H. Danks et al. (eds.) Cognitive Processes in Translation and Interpreting, 1997, pp. 25- 26; and Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches (co- edited with J. F. Kroll, 2005).
Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Psychology and the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University. She received her Master’s degree in Psychology in 1998 and PhD in 2004 on cognitive research on simultaneous interpreting at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience of Maastricht University. In 2006 she received a VENI grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research to work as a research fellow on the neural correlates of language control in bilingual speech production. Her current work at Leiden University continues this research. She has published on working memory and other cognitive skills in simultaneous interpreting, the neural correlates of verbal self-monitoring and cognitive control in languages.

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Annette M. B. de Groot, A.M.B.deGroot@uva.nl; Ingrid K. Christoffels, IChristoffels@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

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Abstract

A topical question in the study of bilingualism from a psycholinguistic perspective is how bilinguals manage to produce relatively pure monolingual language output when the communicative setting requires them to do so. Models that account for this behaviour assume subtle control processes that differentially activate and/or inhibit each of the two underlying language sub-systems and that inhibit — prior to articulation — output of the non-target language sub-system that might otherwise seep through. The control operations in simultaneous interpreting are likely to be even more complex due to the fact that this form of language behaviour demands that both of the interpreter’s language sub-systems are activated, but possibly to a different extent. In this paper we will discuss a number of views on bilingual language control in “monolingual” tasks and, especially, in simultaneous interpreting, which presumably is the cognitively most demanding “bilingual” task. A monolingual task (as we define it) is one where, in theory, the (bilingual) participants only have to address one of their language sub-systems and where, ideally, pure output is produced. A bilingual task is one where task performance requires that both language sub-systems are implicated. A number of studies suggest that the control exerted by bilinguals in monolingual and bilingual language tasks is effectuated by a more general cognitive system that takes care of the control of action in general. An attempt will be made to relate simultaneous interpreting to this more general theory of control.

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Annette M. B. de Groot, Ingrid K. Christoffels. Processes and Mechanisms of Bilingual Control: Insights from Monolingual Task Performance Extended to Simultaneous Interpretation[J]. Journal of Translation Studies. 2007, 10(1): 17-41

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