Abstract
This study experimentally investigated the mechanism of information processing
when performing Japanese-Chinese consecutive interpreting from the viewpoint of
language and cognitive factors for Chinese advanced learners of Japanese. This study
clarified the followings. (1) Regardless of the individual differences in working
memory capacity and the difficulty of the source language, limited cognitive
resources are first spent on source language understanding, with target language
retrieval also being carried out simultaneously. (2) The degree of retrieval to the
target language in parallel depends on the working memory capacity and the
difficulty of the source language. In the case of the complex source language, the
cognitive resources of participants with large working memory capacity are more
abundant than those with small working memory capacity, resulting in significantly
better target language performance.