SPEAKING UNDER WORKLOAD IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING AND DESIGN

摘要

An emphasis on multinational cooperation (e.g. Air Traffic Control, Disaster Response) can require people to communicate in a second language. There is little work on the interaction between workload and speech production in a second language. This paper explores the potential impact of workload on the production of speech in a Stroop task. A group of Chinese students completed the task in Mandarin (L1) or English (L2) and their performance was compared with a group of students speaking English. The results suggest that changes in workload affect speech production, and that these effects are increased when responding in a second language. Responding in a second language is cognitively demanding and can be easily disrupted by increases in workload.