A Study On The Effects Of Interpreting Anxiety On Working Memory In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

Information processing in interpretation involves multiple factors,in which working memory plays an important part.Working memory span test,as an effective tool to measure working memory capacity,is often used in quantitative experimental research.At the same time,information processing in interpreting is also accompanied by extremely complex emotions,among which anxiety is the commonest.This thesis is different from the previous general discussion on the influence of interpreting anxiety on interpreting performance.It explores the influence of multi-level anxiety on interpreting working memory and tries to find some internal reasons for the influence of interpreting anxiety on interpreting performance.This study designs an interpretation experiment in the order of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation,anxiety scaling test and working memory capacity test.The difficulty of Chinese English consecutive interpretation materials is controlled by changing the amount of information volume.After three rounds of experiments on the same group of subjects,it is found that materials with different amount of information volume can lead to different levels of anxiety,and the degree of anxiety increased with the amount of information volume of materials.It is also found that too high and low degree of anxiety are in negative correlation with working memory span performance while a medium level of anxiety actually boosts working memory span performance.In addition,participants with high working memory capacity perform with more stability in working memory span tests.However,more fluctuation is observed in performances of participants with low working memory capacity.From the perspective of information volume and anxiety modulating,this thesis provides implications for interpreting training: On the one hand,teachers can choose materials with different information volume according to students’ interpreting ability and their performance in coping with anxiety.At the same time,they should notice that the ability is dynamic,and the selected materials should be adapted to the students’ learning dynamics.On the other hand,students can take part in anxiety intervention training to adapt to the high or low interpretation anxiety environment,so as to improve the effect and efficiency of interpretation practice.