Sounding out remote interpreting: the impact of sound quality on workload and physiological arousal

The purpose of this study was to measure, using a multimethod approach, whether degraded remote-interpreting sound quality, operationalized through bandwidth-restricted audio with a reduced transmitted frequency range, modulates interpreters’ cognitive load and physiological arousal during Audio and Video Remote Interpreting. A sample of 45 French-native speaking professional conference interpreters interpreted a series of four different 10-minute scenes in English. During each scene, interpreters’ electrodermal and physical responses were measured in real time. After each scene, interpreters filled in the NASA Task Load Index to report perceived workload. After the experiment, judges provided a blind evaluation of random performance samples taken from all participants across all conditions. In both remote interpreting modalities, results reveal a significant drop in performance quality as well as an increase in perceived load. Electrodermal indicators of physiological arousal, however, show divergent patterns across modalities that warrant further investigation with valence-specific measures.