過去研究發現，專家口譯員相較生手口譯員更擅於利用各種語境線索預測講者將表達的訊息。本研究旨在以事件相關腦電位技術，探討專技程度不同的口譯員在聆聽具有脈絡限定性的句子時，預測句末詞語的能力是否有差異，並藉此神經相關機制佐證過去行為研究之發現。實驗材料為具有脈絡限定性之全中文或第一句為中文、第二句為英文之句組，句末為符合或違反語境脈絡之目標詞。三組專技程度不同之口譯員（口譯研究所學生、資歷約1年之資淺口譯員及資歷約11年之專家口譯員）聆聽句組後，須判斷該句組是否符合邏輯。實驗結果發現，在目標詞出現後300-600毫秒間，專家口譯員在左腦之語意一致性效果（semantic congruity effect）顯著大於口譯學生，顯示專家口譯員較能運用脈絡訊息形成預測。然而，究其原委，三組受試者在目標詞違反語境脈絡的情況下，N400波形並無差異；反而是專家口譯員在目標詞符合語境脈絡下，N400較其他兩組受試者為正。N400振幅可反映大腦提取詞彙之難易程度。據此，專家口譯員振幅較小之N400可能係因累積長期經驗，擁有較豐富之詞彙提取架構（retrieval structure），因而得以預測並輕易提取符合語境脈絡之目標詞。另外，在600-900毫秒時，專家口譯員的前腦產生較其他兩組受試者明顯之正向波。晚期正向波（late positivity）可解釋為大腦更新心智表徵（mental representation）所費之力氣，顯示專家口譯員在句組合理時（意即符合平常翻譯情況）花費較多力氣更新心智表徵，而不會將力氣花費在處理不合理的句組。即使受試者僅須判斷句組是否合理，專家口譯員似乎習於更進一步處理訊息以利後續翻譯。此外，資淺口譯員之腦波模式介於專家與學生之間，顯示訓練與經驗或許能強化語意預測能力。

Past studies showed that expert interpreters are better than novice interpreters at using contextual cues to anticipate upcoming information. The present study aims to identify the neural correlates of anticipation by using event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore whether interpreters of different levels of expertise differ in their anticipation of sentence-final target words in contextually constraining sentence pairs. Sentence pairs that were entirely in Chinese or switched to English in the second sentence were aurally presented to expert interpreters, novice interpreters, and post-graduate interpreting students. Results revealed that between 300 to 600-ms post target onset, expert interpreters showed a significantly larger semantic congruity effect in the left hemisphere than interpreting students, indicating that the former used a more predictive process. However, the larger effect was due to an attenuated N400 for the congruent targets. An attenuated N400 could reflect easier lexical access. Due to training and work experiences, expert interpreters may have constructed rich retrieval structures to these lexical items; therefore they accessed the congruent items more easily. In addition, in the 600 to 900-ms time window of congruent conditions, a distinctive frontal positivity existed in the frontal regions of expert interpreters. Late positivities could reflect the updating of mental representations. Expert interpreters could be accustomed to deeper processing so as to prepare optimal mental representations for later translation. Therefore, even though the only task was to judge the logicality of the sentence pairs, expert interpreters still spent more efforts in updating the mental representations to congruent sentences instead of those of incongruent ones. This is because congruent sentences conform to their usual working condition. In addition, the brainwave pattern of novice interpreters seemed to be migrating from that of interpreting students to that of expert interpreters, suggesting that training and experience might be potentially beneficial to improving anticipation capability.

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