Exploring the Impact of Positive and Negative Emotions on the Performance of Student Interpreters in Simultaneous Interpreting

Abstract

Emotions can affect communication and cognitive processes like attention, memory, and judgment. Previous studies mainly investigated cognitive challenges in simultaneous interpreting (SI) or interpreters’ role in emotional situations, but little explored how their performance is affected by emotion. This thesis aims to understand the impact of emotions on interpreters’ SI performance by answering three questions: Are interpreters’ emotions affected by positive and negative emotional stimuli? If affected, how does it impact their performance in terms of omissions, errors, and incompletions? What are the possible contributing factors? To address these questions, this study adopted a mixed-method approach, using interviews, skin conductance measurements, and scales. Thirty student interpreters completed a 15-minute English-to-Chinese SI task. Positive and negative music was used to induce their emotional responses before interpreting. Their emotional states were evaluated using the self-assessment scale between tasks, and their skin conductance was measured throughout the experiment to monitor emotional changes. Target speeches were recorded and analysed for occurrences of omissions, errors, and incompletions. Post-SI semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of their emotions and perceptions of performance. Results show that interpreters’ emotions were significantly affected by music, which further affected their subsequent interpretation. Interpreters under positive emotions made more referential omissions and conative errors but fewer incompletions, while those under negative emotions made fewer omissions but more conative errors and incompletions. According to Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion, Solomon’s model of perceptual processing, and Setton’s model of SI, such emotional influences could be attributed to the impact of emotion on attention, memory, and information processing, as well as individual differences in emotion perception and expression. This thesis highlights the need for understanding interpreters’ emotions and contributes new knowledge about the process of interpreting through the lens of emotion, which further informs interpreter training and opens new avenues for interpreting studies.