THE ROLE OF WORKING MEMORY AND PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING IN INTERPRETING NON-NATIVE ENGLISH ACCENTS

Abstract

Simultaneous interpreting imposes extreme real-time demands on perception, memory, and speech planning. When source speech carries non-native accents, additional variability in segmental and prosodic patterns can depress intelligibility and force interpreters to allocate scarce cognitive resources to decoding rather than message reformulation. This article examines how working memory and phonological processing jointly determine accuracy under accented input. Drawing on research in cognitive psychology, bilingual speech perception, and interpreting studies, it argues that the central executive and phonological loop support rapid encoding, maintenance, and transformation of accented utterances, while phonological categorization and lexical access mechanisms modulate the cost of accent adaptation. An integrative analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental findings indicates that higher working-memory capacity and efficient sublexical processing predict fewer omissions and semantic distortions, especially when accents diverge in phonotactics, vowel space, or prosodic rhythm from listeners’ entrenched norms. Targeted training that combines high-variability accent exposure, form-focused listening, and paced shadowing appears to improve accuracy by stabilizing phonological mappings and freeing capacity for macro-propositional planning. The article concludes with implications for curriculum design and assessment in interpreter education.