The Neurobiology of

Sign Language Interpreting

How we do what we do and how do we advance to excellence.

BRYON K. ROWE  CI, CT, EIPA 5 NIC

 

This book is an attempt to apply scientific research in neurobiology, anthropology and psychology to enhance the performance profession of Sign Language Interpretation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Introduction                                                                                               

Chapter 1

Physiological components of interpreting 

     Senses

     Vision

     Hearing

Chapter 2

Brain wiring                                                

     Deaf Peoples

     Hearing Peoples

     Interpreters

     Charting Your Course

Chapter  3

Language in the Brain                               

      Visual Languages

      Auditory Languages

Chapter 4

Learning and Memory                              

      Learning in General

      Initial learning of another language

      Ongoing advancement of linguistic knowledge

      ASL

      Semantic depth and range

      Memory

Chapter 5 

Cognitive functions applied to Interpreting Models

       Initial Message analysis

       Conflict analysis

       Cultural modifications

       Register analysis

       Specialized Language analysis

       Target Language Formulation

       Production of Target Language

       Postproduction reflective analysis

       Feedback analysis

       Ongoing Processes

       Environmental

       Multitasking

Chapter 6

Psychosocial components of Interpreting

        Schemas

        Interpersonal interactions with Deaf people

        Different micro culture

        Interpersonal interactions with hearing people

        Interpersonal interactions with other interpreters

        Intergenerational

        Educational

        Racial / Cultural

        Gender

        Parentage

        Strong emotions affect on interpreting

        Interpreting With a Deaf Heart

 

 

 

A Neurobiological View of Interpreting

 

Introduction

            This is your brain on interpreting (sizzle). After a taxing day of interpreting an interpreter may feel like his / her brain is "fried". People who are aware of the cultural reference implied by the first sentence probably have the image in mind of a frying pan with eggs sizzling in it and a caption reading "Your Brain on Drugs".  The implication of the anti-drug-use advertisement inferred if you use drugs your brain would be changed irrevocably for the worse. This book is inferring that an interpreter’s brain is irrevocably changed by interpreting and hopefully for the better.  The human behavior we call interpreting is a complex, dynamic, and energy consuming activity. Recent brain research by -

(The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Ericsson, K. Anders; Krampe, Ralf T.; Tesch-Römer, Clemens Psychological Review, Vol 100(3), Jul 1993, 363-406. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363)

- has been able to actually measure a difference in expert violinists and pianists brains that all experts have and non-experts do not have. Modern research is finding that what we do does indeed change the structure, size of areas of the brain, and it's inter-connectedness.  People who want to become interpreters are taught the languages they will use and the techniques of interpreting and are expected to continue to improve over time.  Experienced interpreters need to know how to improve to a level of expertise. If brain research has found measurable differences in the brains of expert and novice violinists then it stands to reason that measurable differences may be occurring in the brains of expert interpreters. The topic of this book is to examine that postulation and to explore how to go about changing a brain from an interpreter brain to an expert interpreter brain. (Without the sizzle)

            We are in an age where nurture vs. nature is being debated for so many of our human behaviors. Many people thought virtuoso violinist were born with innate gifts but Ericson, Krampe, Tesch-Römer’s research has found that effortful prolonged practice is key to becoming a virtuoso. Both nurture and nature have one thing in common, the brain.  Nature describes what people are given at birth through genetics and nurture describes the development people undergo via experiences.  The common phrase nurture vs. nature is really a question about the origin and control of human behavior.  Are behaviors created solely by the way the brain is formed or by what a person has been exposed to during their developmental period? Attempting to suss out which of our human behaviors are derived purely from neurological structures and development; which are learned behaviors molded by our environments; which are a combination of innate brain structures influenced by our environment and development, is a complex and intriguing endeavor. This book tries to examine the nature vs. nurture of interpreting or in other words the how and the why of interpreting based on what we now know of the how and why of the brain.  Understanding how and why interpreters brain do what they do while they are interpreting can lead interpreters into a greater understanding of what they do; how to correct errors and consciously make improvements, weather or not they can or can't chance something they do, and weather or not they should or shouldn't change something they do.

            Interpreters sometimes feel like Theseus in the Labyrinth at Knossos when seeking to improve their interpreting skills. Or that the Minotaur of RID CMP CEU requirements / certification revocation paralyzed them into attending workshops that hold as much nourishment for their professional growth as psyllium husks provide for their body. (RID Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf / CMP Certification Maintenance Program / CEU Continuing Education Units) The interpreting profession has developed from; a self-taught, mostly volunteer, service to; a Bachelors degree requiring, exam qualifying, full time, paid, profession.  Bodies of higher education have designed curriculum and become accredited in order to aid modern interpreters in acquiring the necessary skills, degree, and preparation to take certification exams in order to enter into the profession.  It is still widely accepted within the interpreting community that a Bachelors degree and certification are minimum qualifications to be an interpreter. What happens to an interpreter after the completion of the degree and passing of certification exams? All interpreters are required to earn continuing education units but this requirement is meant more as an incentive to continue ones development not as an aid in mastering the art of interpreting.  The catch 22 in this paradigm is that there are no experts creating curriculum to guide interpreters especially those without a formal ITP (Interpreter Training Program) background toward the goal of mastery. A few institutions offer advanced degrees in interpreting and there are advanced degrees in related fields like linguistics but nothing for the average interpreter to utilize in his / her work life to help him / her master the profession of interpreting while working full time and at the same time satisfying CEU requirements.

            This book is a initial attempt at re-envisioning the educational process for working certified interpreters.  Instead of looking at interpreting education from a skill by skill acquisition perspective this book looks at the interpreting process from the perspective of the most vital component of interpreting, namely the BRAIN. As well as a paradigm shift from anecdotal, experiential analysis of interpreting advancement to a scientific based use of neurobiological, psychosocial, anthropological research to inform processes and activities to help interpreters achieve the highest level of competency possible.  Interpreters erroneously accept that interpreting is a function of the ears, eyes, mouth and hands. In reality it is the human brain that perceives, controls, and decides all that we do when we interpret.

            This book will examine several questions.  How does the human brain and body do the tasks of interpreting? What can the brain do and what can it not do? What are the assumptions interpreters have about the process of interpreting that are, and are not supported by brain research? How can interpreters utilize neuroscience research and findings to the interpreting process and development of mastery in interpreting? What interpreting behaviors are parts of the innate structure of the brain and what are learned behaviors that can be modified to provide a better interpretation?  

 

Physiological components of interpreting

 

            Every elementary school child is taught that people have five senses, there are even songs to reinforce this concept for children. We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our tongue, feel with our hands. Unfortunately most peoples, including interpreters, education on the human range of senses ends there. The reality of our senses is more complex. The brain is the major organ of sensation, we hear, see, smell, touch, taste and many more sensations in our brains. The common vernacular "we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, sense odors with our noses, and feel with our hands” is not accurate.  A scientific biological explanation of the same idea could be stated, "human sense organs when stimulated to or exceeding a threshold send impulses to the brain where the impulses are interpreted then meaning and actions deemed required are initiated". in other words the brain does the seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, etc. the sense organs do nothing more than send inputs to the brain. For example the images the retina of the eye (where the visual sense cells reside) perceives everything upside down and sends it on to the brain that way. An experiment asked people to wear glasses that flipped all they see upside down therefore creating the image on the retina that is the opposite of normal, namely a right side up image. The people in the experiment were disoriented for a while but then were perfectly able to see and move about their environment.  The brain had made an adjustment. When the people removed the glasses they went through the same visual confusion as when they first put them on until the brain made a re-adjustment.

 (Vision without inversion of the retinal image. Stratton, George M. Psychological Review, Vol 4(4), Jul 1897, 341-360. doi: 10.1037/h0075482)

It may seem like a nit picking delineation between common knowledge and a scientific approach, and in the everyday world it isn't needed but for interpreters understanding how this minute difference influences interpreting is one step in becoming a more skilled interpreter. A broadly acceptable definition of a sense would be "A system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that responds to a specific physical phenomenon, and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted." There is no firm agreement as to the number of senses because of differing definitions of what constitutes a sense. As with most things people learn in elementary school the reality is more complex. People learn how to respond to the sensory input their brain receives during their developmental years and usually never reexamine what they learnt because there seems to be no reason to. Interpreters however need to reexamine their responses to sensory input because they are now sensing for another person (especially when interpreting for Deaf Blind people). The person an interpreter is working with has a completely different life sensory experience than the one the interpreter is familiar with. To begin the discussion it is necessary to first examine what is the scientific understanding of the human senses.

Humans have a variety of sensory cell types, which include:

Chemoreceptor; A sense organ, or one of its cells (such as those for the sense of taste or smell) that can respond to a chemical stimulus.

Mechanoreceptor; Any information about mechanical changes in its environment, such as movement, tension and pressure.

Photoreceptor; A specialized neuron able to detect, and react to light

Nociceptor; A sensory receptor that sends signals that cause the perception of pain in response to a potentially damaging stimulus.

Thermoreceptor; A nerve cell that is sensitive to changes in temperature

The senses are frequently divided into: those that perceive external stimuli, known as exteroceptive senses; those that perceive the body's own position, motion, and state, known as proprioceptive senses; and those that perceive sensations in internal organs, known as interoceptive senses.

Exteroceptive senses include the traditional five: vision, audition (hearing), olfaction (smell), gustation (taste), tactition (touch), as well as thermoception (temperature differences); and possibly an additional weak magnetoception (direction). 

Proprioceptive senses include; equilibrioception (balance); proprioception (a sense of the position and movement of the parts of one's own body).

Interoceptive senses include: stimuli from the body that include pain, temperature, itch, sensual touch, muscular and visceral sensations (internal organs), vasomotor activity (relating to the nerves and muscles used to constrict or dilate blood vessels) , hunger, thirst, and ‘air hunger’.   

Craig, Ad (Bud). "Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body." Current Opinion in Neurobiology 13.4 (2003): 500-05. Web.

 "In humans, a meta-representation of the primary interoceptive activity is engendered in the right anterior insula, which seems to provide the basis for the subjective image of the material self as a feeling (sentient) entity, that is, emotional awareness."

            Why do interpreters need to be aware of the biology of senses? The human brain is constantly bombarded by inputs from sensory nerves and the brain is constantly making judgments on what to do with the inputs received. No human brain can attend to the constant bombardment from the sensory neurons therefor the brain selectively "ignores" inputs as well as responding to inputs using specialized areas of the brain that can work without requiring the activation of the areas of the brain devoted to conscious decision making.  An example would be while reading this book a person is sitting in a chair and the pressure sensitive neurons in his / her skin inform the brain that an area of skin has had too much pressure for to long of a time. The brain causes the person to adjust his / her position while the part of the brain dealing with comprehending the message being read. The (prefrontal cortex) will be barely aware the brain made the body move to alleviate excessive pressure due to the intense concentration on the task of reading and understanding the book. The brain will also increase the threshold for response to a stimulus if the person is concentrating on a task deemed more important.  While an interpreter is actively interpreting he /she will be hearing or seeing a message and moving his / her hands or speaking. At the same time the interpreter's brain could be receiving nerve impulses informing the brain of: noise of air handling machines, squeaking of chairs, movement of people, animals, or other objects, pressure from sitting, temperature of environment, blood sugar levels (hunger) body position in space, perfumes, odors from food, etc.  If a brain actively attended to every input it would not be able to accomplish any complicated task. The human brain is designed to selectively ignore inputs that don't exceed established thresholds there for it ignores more than it attends to. An example of this phenomenon happened to an interpreter who was seated at a round table in a large room containing many such tables, interpreting for a person seated across from her. While intently attending to the speaker and interpreting she was completely oblivious to the noise her chair was making as she moved. A colleague got up and motioned to the interpreter to stand and switched out the chair with one that didn't squeak at each movement.  The implication for interpreters is that if the norm is for the brain to selectively ignore a large amount of inputs are any of the inputs being ignored pertinent to the interpreting event? How does an interpreter develop the skill of determining what is pertinent for an interpreted event and what does the interpreter do with this information.  Are any of the sensory inputs important to the person being interpreted for and what is that person’s sensory experience. Knowing the persons sensory experience helps an interpreter to formulate a cogent way to convey the information so it is readily understood.  If while reading this a feeling that the statements don't apply to the reader because he / she is extremely attentive then the reader should read

(Chabris, Christopher F., and Daniel J. Simons. The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. New York: Crown, 2010. Print) or (Montague, Read. Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions. New York: Dutton, 2006. Print)

Also on the Internet http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html to see videos that illustrate the concept of selective attentiveness. The author of this book has also done several (unscientific) anecdotal research activities about this concept. He asked interpreters he worked with if after completing a 20-minute interpretation was his team interpreter aware of a specific sensory input that happened during the 20 minutes (usually nearer the end of the 20 minutes). Ex; a cell phones sound, an odor, or movement of something or someone. Very often the working interpreter was so intent on the interpretation he / she was unaware of the extraneous sensory inputs.

 

            What is the sensory experience of the person being interpreted for? HoH, Deaf, Deaf / Blind, hearing aid, cochlear implant etc. Interpreters work with a wide variety of people, who each have their own life sensory experience. Interpreters are more keenly aware that people do have different life sensory experience and that the so-called average person does not exist. All people have variation from a statistical average. However interpreters can also fall into a bad habit of making assumptions about the other person’s sensory experience.  If a Deaf person fluent in ASL requests interpreting services to be provided in ASL and then chooses to speak for themselves with a clear and understandable voice the schema the interpreter entered into the assignment with will be very different from the reality of the individual being served.  The stereotype interpreters have is that people who use "real" ASL can't hear and never speak for themselves and if they do then their voice is hard to understand by most hearing people. Interpreters utilize such stereotypes to help quickly create a schema for a given interpreting event.

(Schema: an underlying organizational pattern or structure; conceptual framework: A schema provides the basis by which someone relates to the events he or she experiences. dictionary.com)

            One activity interpreters do to prepare for assignments is to develop a sensory experience schema for the person(s) they will be interpreting for. Interpreters seek answers to several basic questions to create this schema. Ex:  What language does the Deaf of Hard of hearing person prefer to use (ASL or VRE)? (VRE = visual representation of English) Will the person using the interpreter want him /her to interpret from ASL / VRE into English?  What is the interpreted event's purpose and context?

            Less common questions asked to develop a schema are: What is the age of the person being interpreted for? What is the person's dominant culture? What is the person’s life experience with hearing? (Born Deaf, latent deaf)

            It is difficult to have enough time at the beginning of each interpreting assignment to garner a full enough understanding of the unique sensory experience of the individual being interpreted for.  Some ways interpreters can become more adept at creating a more complete and cogent schema that enables the interpreter to provide the best services possible. One is to not become complacent and relying on what you have learnt. Another is to spend time talking about life's sensory experience with a wide variety of Deaf and Hard of hearing people during non-interpreting events. Similarly interpreters can view Vlogs (video blogs by Deaf people) that incorporate stories of his / her sensory history. Yet one more is to take the time to sit down and make flash cards that include all the possible sensory experiences you are aware of and then randomly chose several and combine them. Then write about how this unique combination could influence a person. This activity could be done with a group of colleagues.  The point of all the mentioned exorcizes is to expand interpreters schemas. After performing activities that expand the number of schemas take time to critically analyze how each schema could effect an interpretation. Examples of how interpretations could be effected may include: amount of mouthing of English, amount of expansion of idiomatic expressions and how to represent idiomatic expressions, making correlations between sounds and vision, as well as many more.   

 

 

            Focus of the person being interpreted for.

            Interpreters can walk into an interpreting even with an assumed presumption of the focus of the Deaf / HoH person or can enter into each situation and make determinations based on information gleaned from the environment, participants, and literature pertaining to the event. Interpreters who have many years of experience save on cognitive effort by predetermining what focus a given interpreted event will have based on previous experience.  Although doing this predetermining is helpful for the interpreter to develop a schema for the event it can also lead the interpreter down an erroneous path if the predetermination is not rigorously checked against facts at each and every interpreted event.  An interpreter shared her experience working a conference. She prepared for the conference by investigating the profession of the attendees, topics to be discussed at the conference, checking on the language preference of the Deaf person, the environment (lighting, chair, podium, screen display of power points, etc.) however she did not ask the Deaf person what his / her goals and purpose of attending the conference was.  The interpreter worked diligently and hard to accurately convey the information presented during the lectures. When a break was announced the interpreter wanted to go to the restroom and take a break however the Deaf participant had no interest in the presentations and only attended the conference to take advantage of the break times to do some informal networking.  If the interpreter had known the Deaf persons focus not only would she have made sure to save energy for the important work to be done during breaks but also would have listened to the audiences responses during the lectures and added that information into the interpretation.  The Deaf person could use the audience responses to make connections with the people he / she chatted with during the break times.  Many interpreters when reading the last sentence would say to themselves "I would never ignore the audience responses I would give the Deaf person everything".  The point of this section on the senses is that our BRAINS selectively ignore and do so without our conscious mind being aware of it.

            Interpreters need to set up parameters of value for each and every interpreted event and train our brains to attend to the sensory inputs that meet the value criteria for that event. The parameters need to include the sensory inputs the person being interpreted for needs / wants. Is the person hard of hearing, deaf, deaf with low vision, deaf blind, etc.?  An easy and humorous example deals with the sound of flatulence. When interpreting for adults in a formal situation if a quiet sound of flatulence happens all participants will ignore it especially if it is not accompanied by unpleasant odors. An interpreter in that situation may not even be aware of the sound due to his / her intense focus on the message. However the same flatulence sound made in an elementary school classroom should be interpreted regardless of any accompanying odor because elementary school children find flatulence sounds amusing thus causing the class to respond and the Deaf student should be included in the "fun".  The interpreter in the elementary class may be just as intently focusing on the message as the interpreter for the adults and the message can be complex however he / she needs to have trained his / her mind to attend to sounds like flatulence and be prepared to include an interpretation of the sound (as well as the resulting responses).

            The brain's experience of the world is different from the actual reality of the world. One example is how the brain perceives the body. The density of sensory neurons in the skin give the brain a very different picture of the body than what the eye perceives as the shape of the body.