Semantically related gestures facilitate language comprehension during simultaneous interpreting

Abstract Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, but do they influence comprehension in simultaneous interpreters, and if so, is this modulated by interpreting (SI) and/or experience? In a picture-matching task, 24 professional interpreters translators were exposed to utterances accompanied semantically matching representational gestures, unrelated pragmatic or no while viewing passively (interpreters translators) during SI only). During passive viewing, both groups faster with related than gestures. SI, showed the same result. The results suggest that sensitive semantic relationship between speech gesture, facilitated when are linked. This sensitivity not experience. Thus, despite interpreters’ extreme use, multimodal processing facilitates way as all other processing.