Working memory holds information in an immediately accessible state for ongoing cognition. It is thought to play an important role in successful simultaneous interpreting. This study investigated the relationships between, on the one hand, variations in cognitive load (high vs. low) in a working memory task and, on the other hand, the accuracy of rendition of a source text of predefined difficulty (easy vs. difficult) in a simultaneous interpreting task. The results show that more information was retained in the working memory task when the cognitive load was low than when it was high. Correlations with accuracy scores in the simultaneous interpreting task revealed that working memory performance in both high and low cognitive load conditions was related to difficult source text passages, but not to easy ones. The results of this study provide a more nuanced picture of the relationship between working memory and simultaneous interpreting than heretofore.
