Emotional content affects interpreters

Abstract There has been a growing interest recently in the psychophysiological correlates of interpreting affect-laden content. Such an examination could provide crucial insights into affective language processing in the highly cognitively taxing task of interpreting. We tested how professional interpreters process affect-laden and neutral content when interpreting. Using a multi-method approach, we employed psychophysiological measures (electrodermal activity and heart rate), response times and a self-report tool to study their emotional reactivity to negative, neutral and positive sentences. These were interpreted both from the participants’ native language (L1; Polish) into their foreign language (L2; English) and in the opposite direction. We found more pronounced physiological arousal and self-reported emotional states in response to affect-laden content compared to neutral sentences, which was observed in both interpreting directions. Behavioral results (response-time data) also supported these findings, showing longer processing times for affect-laden sentences than for neutral ones. The outcomes offer a novel contribution to the cognitive and affective dimensions of interpreting.