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Biomedical subjects

V Darò

Publications and source records attributed to V Darò.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Delayed auditory feedback in polyglot simultaneous interpreters.

Twelve polyglot students of simultaneous interpretation and 12 controls (students of the faculty of Medicine) were submitted to a task of verbal fluency under amplified normal auditory feedback (NAF) and under three delayed auditory feedback (DAF) conditions with three different delay intervals (150, 200, and 250 msec). The control group showed a significant reduction in verbal fluency and a significant increase in the number of mistakes in all three DAF conditions. The interpreters' group, however, did not show any significant speech disruption neither in the subjects' mother tongue (L1) nor in their second language (L2) across all DAF conditions. Interpreters' general high verbal fluency along with their ability to pay less attention to their own verbal output make them more resistant to the interfering effects of DAF on speech.

Adult

Effects of speaking speed on cerebral lateralization of speech assessed by a dual-task interference paradigm.

Cerebral asymmetry for speech was assessed by means of a verbal-manual interference paradigm in a sample of 16 right-handed men at two different speaking rates. Normal speech rate disrupted the right hand significantly more than the left, whereas increased speech rate showed no differences between right and left hands during verbal-manual interference tasks. This result suggests a role of speaking speed in modifying cerebral motor functions related to speech production.

Adult

Audio-phonological and neuropsychological aspects of simultaneous interpretation. Role of auditory shadowing.

Two groups of female interpreter students (3rd year and 4th year) at the School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste (SIT) underwent a paradigm of complex shadowing. All subjects were polyglots, with Italian as first language (L1) and German, learned after age 10, as second language (L2). In the first part of the experiment, they were asked to listen to and immediately repeat 60 lists of 50 words each in Italian passed through earphones to the right ear (RE) and the same number of words to the left ear (LE). In the second part, the subjects were asked to do the same thing, but this time with German words to be listened to and immediately translated into Italian. The 3rd-year students generally made significantly more errors than the 4th-year students, both in L1 and in L2, and in particular when listening to the words with their left ear, as opposed to the right. No significant difference between ears or languages was shown by the 4th-year students. Moreover, no significant difference was found between the two groups in tasks requiring verbal long-term memory, i.e. repetition of lists of words with 'target words' to remember. The longer exercise in simultaneous interpreting apparently improves the students' performances in shadowing, and probably modifies the organization of some aspects of hemispheric specialization for L1 and L2.

Auditory Perception