2021 Volume 43 Pages 16-35
Speech-to-text interpreting is a peer-supporting activity by student supporters to transcribe in-class audio information into words immediately to provide deaf and hard-of-hearing students. The present study aimed to measure relationship between experience of speech-to-text interpreting and working memory capacity. Specifically, we hypothesized that working memory capacity（WMC）of experienced supporters should be higher relative to that of inexperienced. We used Reading Span Test（RST）and Listening Span Test（LST）to measure to WMC in 16 experienced and 12 inexperienced student supporters and conducted a three-way ANOVA. The results did not support the hypothesis in that the RST scores of inexperienced students were higher relative to those of experienced. However, the LST scores supported the hypothesis. We speculate that the present RST results did not support the hypothesis because of（1）dissimilarity between the test material and the support activity,（2）increased number of strategies due to greater difficulty in RST relative to LST, and（3）decreased motivation of experienced participants. Given the finding that experienced participants yielded higher LST scores，LST may predict performance in speech-to-text interpreting activities.
