37.730, Reviews: Research Methods in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies: Ana María Rojo López; Ricardo Muñoz Martín (eds.) (2025)

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Subject: 37.730, Reviews: Research Methods in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies: Ana María Rojo López; Ricardo Muñoz Martín (eds.) (2025)

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Date: 21-Feb-2026
From: Victoria Beatrix Fendel [vbmf2 at cantab.ac.uk]
Subject: Ana María Rojo López; Ricardo Muñoz Martín (eds.) (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-2289

Title: Research Methods in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting
Studies
Series Title: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: John Benjamins
           http://www.benjamins.com/
Book URL: https://benjamins.com/catalog/rmal.10

Editor(s): Ana María Rojo López; Ricardo Muñoz Martín

Reviewer: Victoria Beatrix Fendel

SUMMARY
Research Methods in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies
(CTIS) consists of an introduction by the editors, fourteen chapters,
each with its own list of references and suggestions for further
reading, and a subject index. The volume is intended to provide the
CTIS community, which “is diversifying its areas of interest but also
getting populated fast,” with much needed “more solid conceptual
frameworks and better, up-to-date methodological guidelines” (p. 4).
It “aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to various research
methods in CTIS, emphasizing their relevance and application across
different research domains” (p. 6) in the form of “practical guidance”
(p. 6). These goals are well achieved.
The Introduction (by Muñoz Martín and Rojo López) provides a brief
overview of the field of CTIS (pp. 1–3) and the challenges it faces
(pp. 4–6) before introducing the chapters of the volume. Chapters 1
and 2 concern issues that every CTIS researcher faces. Chapters 3 to
14 deal with specific methods and are arranged by whether the
methodology described is introspective (Chapters 3 to 5) or
extrospective (Chapters 6 to 14) (p. 8). Chapters 3 to 7 report on
minimally invasive methods, whereas Chapters 8 to 14 deal with more
intrusive methods (p. 8).
Chapter 1 (by Whyatt, Hatzidaki, and French) on participant profiling
describes participant sampling. Participant samples in CTIS are often
(too) small due to the (non-)availability of relevant participants (p.
37) despite purposeful sampling, i.e. “selecting individuals or cases
for a study based on specific criteria or characteristics relevant to
the research objectives, rather than using random selection methods”
(p. 23). The chapter emphasizes the importance of participant
profiling, including language histories (pp. 32 and 35).
Chapter 2 (by Ehrensberger-Dow and O’Brien) on designing studies with
naturalistic tasks describes designs that prioritise ecological
validity (p. 49), i.e. the observation of translation and interpreting
professionals in their normal work environments (p. 52). Researchers
have to balance “the advantages and drawbacks of naturalistic
settings, deciding between collection of data in the field, the
recreation of a workplace in a controlled experimental or laboratory
setting, or the use of immersive technologies to augment, mix, or
recreate reality in a virtual context” (p. 54). In “engaged research”,
i.e. involving an industry or institutional stakeholder, questions of
the dissemination of findings need to be negotiated (p. 63). Students,
while often available, are not recommended as proxies for
professionals in studies (p. 59).
Chapter 3 (by Dorer, Kuznik, Orrego Carmona, and Zwischenberger) on
surveys and interviews describes questionnaire-based and
interview-based designs. Non-confidential data collection is common in
e.g. economics, marketing, and business, but confidential data
collection is typical in social, psychological, educational, and
cultural research (p. 71). In interview-based designs, remote
interviews have been on the rise yet come with “restrictions on
non-verbal cues” and “interviewees possibly exercising greater control
over the interaction and withholding information” (p. 77). The chapter
sets out the operationalisation of theoretical concepts into manifest
questions that can be used for measurements (p. 79) and emphasises the
need for detailed documentation at every step (pp. 84 and 86).
Chapter 4 (by Tiselius, Schwieter, da Silva, and Massey) on cued
retrospection describes the process of “eliciting participants’
verbalizations about their own task or performance immediately or
shortly after task execution” (p. 92) by means of “retrieval cues in
short-term memory that can be reactivated” (p. 92) and thus access the
long-term memory (p. 102). Fear of exposure and feelings of discomfort
in participants should be minimised e.g. by training them in advance
and reassuring them that they will not be judged (p. 95). Cued
retrospection “is most effectively deployed in multi-method and mixed
methods research” (p. 97), partially due to being a qualitative
approach. Cues can create new cognitive processes (e.g. due to
participants being confronted with their own performance), yet see
also Gumul (2020) (p. 99).
Chapter 5 (by Borg, Heine, and Risku) on observations and diaries
describes ethnographic, in the sense of Williams’ (2006: 838)
cognitive ethnography, observation and diarization methods, carried
out either by the researcher (e.g. field notes) or by the participant
(e.g. process notes) (p. 110). Different methods of observation, e.g.
open or hidden (p. 114), exist and have different effects on the
observed and their perception of the researcher (pp. 118 and 126).
Ethical issues prominently arise in online ethnography due to “the
difficulty to ask all participants […] to sign a declaration of
consent” (p. 117). Crucially, “researchers need to be ready to accept
that their assumptions about the (significance of the) events in the
setting could be wrong and there are factors in play that they did not
foresee” (p. 122).
Chapter 6 (by Enríquez Raído, Angelone, and Olalla Soder) on screen
recording describes “recording the computer screen displays of
participants as they perform actions in that computer” (p. 134)
possibly in combination with e.g. audio recordings or keylogging (p.
137). Most frequently, this method is used to explore
“problem-solving, information-seeking behaviour, decision-making, and
the translation process" (pp. 137 and 144–146). One key ethical issue
is covert recording (p. 139). In screen-based settings, as many
translation and interpreting settings are, the method has high
ecological validity (p. 142). Screen recording is best combined with
other tools and subsequently time-aligned (e.g. using CASMACAT or
InputLog) (p. 150).
Chapter 7 (by Muñoz Martín, Sun, Du, and Puerini) on keylogging
describes the monitoring and registering of keyboard presses and
inter-keystroke intervals (ikis) (p. 157). Keyloggers, “initially
developed in the 1970s and 1980s primarily for system maintenance and
debugging purposes”, have widely been “used as malware … e.g. Magic
Lantern, Zeus, DarkTequila, Pegasus” (pp. 157–158). Research questions
“focus on the temporal aspects of text production, such as pause
patterns and typing speed, to infer cognitive processes” (p. 160),
e.g. classifying ikis into pauses, respites, bumps, and lags (p. 168).
As regards ecological validity, keyloggers are said to often “fade
away from participants’ conscious awareness in a matter of minutes”
(p. 174).
Chapter 8 (by Ahrens and Janikowski) on speech recording describes
analogue and digital recording of sound waves of spoken voice (p.
183). The chapter neatly summarises key terminology (pp. 184–186).
Research questions using this method focus on cognitive load in
interpreting (p. 187), measuring accuracy, filled pauses, or
ear-voice-span (pp. 187 and 189). Hesitation is often used to point to
cognitive effort (p. 189) but can in fact also be caused by
physiological factors or stylistic choices (p. 190). Speech is
conceptualised as “the interface for cognition and emotion” (p. 191).
Alignment of the different data streams (i.e. audio, transcript,
annotation of source and target) is complicated for practical reasons
and due to “structural reorganization” as part of the interpreting
process (pp. 194–195). Automatic speech recognition tools require
significant manual correction especially due to e.g. truncated words
(pp. 199–200).
Chapter 9 (by Walker, Hvelplund, and Lei) on screen eyetracking is
interested in “eye movements relative to chosen stimuli”, i.e.
fixations, saccades, and regressions (p. 213) based on the eye-mind
hypothesis consisting of the immediacy assumption and “the eye-mind
assumption, linking fixation duration to processing time” (p. 214).
Eyetracking “can only offer insights into certain elements of
processing effort and thought processes”, as there is no one-to-one
link (p. 216). Most studies using the method focus on process
research, incl. interaction with CAT software, or audiovisual product
reception (p. 217). While pupil diameter is often measured (p. 220),
it can vary also due to emotional responses (p. 221). Quality control
of the data usually needs some manual intervention (p. 228).
Ecological validity is limited due to movement restriction during data
collection (pp. 220 and 228).
Chapter 10 (by Kornacki and Kruger) on dynamic eyetracking describes
wearable eyetrackers (e.g. in the form of glasses) which collect the
same data as screen-based static systems at a lower sampling frequency
(p. 236) but with more ecological validity (p. 238), although
unfamiliarity with wearing glasses and such may have an impact (p.
248). Semantic gaze mapping, i.e. mapping the recording onto a
representation or reference image, is a largely manual process due to
“each participant record[ing] a unique scene (what the participant
looks at)” (p. 237). The higher ecological validity makes research
topics such as backchannelling during dialogue interpreting (Vranjes,
Brône & Feyaerts 2018) (p. 239) or gaze aversion (pp. 243–244)
possible. The chapter neatly distinguishes between eye-tracking
measurements (e.g. gaze location, gaze duration, gaze trajectory) and
eye-tracking constructs (gaze location, fixations, saccades, scanpath,
heatmaps, gaze duration, dwell time, saccade duration, pupil diameter,
and blink rate), which are inferred from measurements (p. 241).
Analysis techniques include gaze-contingent techniques, heatmaps,
scanpath data, and areas of interest (AOI) analysis (p. 249).
Chapter 11 (by Rojo López, Ramos Caro, and Patalas) on
psychophysiological methods describes psychophysiological responses
regulated by the somatosensory and autonomic nervous systems
(peripheral), and those recording brain activity and sensory
processing (central) (p. 257). The chapter focuses on measurements of
skin conductance (p. 257), used, for example, in work on emotional
reactivity to content (p. 259), along with cortisol secretion (pp.
257–258) and heart rate (variability) (p. 258), which is used, for
example, in research on stress (pp. 259–260). Heart rate responds
within seconds or fractions thereof to a stressor, whereas cortisol
responses take tens of minutes (p. 265). Ecological validity is
comparatively limited (p. 270). Ideally, psychophysiological methods
are combined with other methods “to better grasp the roles of emotion
and attention in translation and interpreting, as well as their
cumulative impact on performance” (p. 270).
Chapter 12 (by García, Koshkin, and de Oliveira Paiva) on
eletroencephalography (EEG) describes the measurement of “electrical
potentials at a given electrode, that is, the electrical current flow
from one active electrode on the scalp to a reference electrode” (p.
280). This is on the premise “that specific electrophysiological
modulations are robust indices of ongoing cognitive processes” (p.
280). The core constructs with this method are “directionality,
translation units and task-specific experience” (p. 283). EEG “offers
great temporal resolution” and “can trace the inner time course of the
phenomena under scrutiny, revealing effects that occur before (or in
the absence of) perceptually noticeable (overt) behavioral responses”
(p. 289). In order to obtain a good signal-to-noise ratio, at least 50
trials per condition are recommended (p. 289), and it should be noted
that “scalp-level measurements are highly prone to electrical
artifacts arising from muscular and ocular activity” (p. 294).
Ecological validity is limited given the setup (p. 295). The chapter
is clear about the fact that “ERP, oscillatory, and functional
connectivity effects can rarely be interpreted with certainty” (p.
296).
Chapter 13 (by Hervais-Adelman and Babcock) on magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) describes structural imaging, which provides
morphological information about the brain based on e.g. T1-weighted
images, and functional imaging, which provides information on how the
brain reacts to stimuli based on BOLD (blood oxygenation level
dependent) signals (p. 305). The BOLD signal “is a proxy for neural
activity” (p. 305) yet with a time lag of about 2–5s (pp. 306 and
320). Work has focussed on questions of functional specialization of
areas of the brain and task-based activation of areas (p. 306). The
method relies on “subtractive logic, that is, on comparing two related
tasks deemed to differ only in the process we are interested in
observing” (p. 306). During participant recruitment, “participant
handedness is usually restricted to right-handed individuals because
of the known tendency for left-handed individuals to have different
patterns of cerebral language lateralization” (p. 313).
Signal-to-noise ratio must be maximised as much as possible (p. 317).
Ecological validity is very limited given the setup (p. 320).
Chapter 14 (by Satiago de Torres and Meseguer Cutillas) on reaction
time describes the “interval between stimulus presentation and the
participant’s response” (p. 324) with an interest in the “temporal
dynamics of cognitive and motor processes” (p. 324). The key
assumption is that “the time it takes to go from a stimulus to a
response reflects the complexity of the processing that the nervous
system carries out during that time” (p. 324). Response time is
conceptualised as falling into “processing stages” (p. 327). The
method has often been used in work on frequency effects, including
theorising the stored mental representation of a unit, priming effects
(p. 330), and “to explore issues of bilingual lexical processing” (p.
331). Incorrect trials are usually discarded and only tested for
speed-accuracy trade-offs (p. 339). When plotting data from reaction
time measurements, the resulting curves usually have a long right tail
due to noise (p. 334), which needs to be dealt with in the data
analysis. There is a good degree of freedom in how to handle this, yet
this comes with challenges (pp. 341–342). Reaction time studies are
generally “better suited for simple tasks”, i.e. simpler than
translation and interpreting of passages (p. 344).
EVALUATION
The volume is a practical guide through methods of CTIS with a
critical eye to their limitations. In particular, ecological validity
and ethical challenges are discussed in each chapter, and hardware and
software solutions are described so as to empower the reader.
On the one hand, the volume highlights three fundamentally important
aspects. Firstly, every chapter emphasises how the measurement taken
is only a proxy for e.g. the cognitive process of interest. The
measurement is determined by the operationalisation of the research
question. Secondly, data analysis and interpretation are clearly kept
apart from each other. Some chapters explicitly highlight the fact
that interpretation of analysed data is often less than
straightforward and unambiguous (e.g. p. 296). Generalisations from
the data are even more complicated given the limitations of the
sampled population. Thirdly, the positives of collaborating with
industry stakeholders are repeatedly brought out (e.g. p. 124) despite
potential limitations regarding data reporting (p. 64) and differences
in focus points (p. 207 on industry-oriented AI applications).
However, especially given that many of the methods covered in the
volume are regularly used in industry settings, it is important to
communicate the limitations of data measurements through, and ethical
concerns arising from, them. Think of applications such as Hubstaff,
which records employee’s screens, monitors mouse movements, and
registers keystrokes. These are used to measure “productivity” –
possible not a concept operationalised well for diverse job profiles
(!). To what extent is there an observer effect from the screen
recording (pp. 114 and 135)? How does this observer effect skew the
data gathered? Perhaps industry could learn from academia and vice
versa.
On the other hand, there are three significant challenges to the field
that are addressed in more or less detail. The first is the
“reproducibility crisis” (p. 311), as it is candidly called in Chapter
13. This refers to the fact that samples are very diverse and
difficult to compare, that “cherry-picking” still happens in the face
of too much data (p. 286), and that publication bias affects this
field like any other (p. 342). One way out of this situation is
pre-registration, which is in fact explicitly suggested in Chapter 14
(p. 343). This would ensure that null results are reported, that all
decisions at every stage of the process are transparent, and that the
field as a whole can move forward. The Registered Reports in
Linguistics make this possible now. The second, I find, is the fact
that there is quite some reliance on the L1/L2 distinction without it
being spelled out what language profiles look like, e.g. whether the
L1 is the pragmatically preferred language for the translator or
interpreter that translates faster into the L1 than the L2 (p. 331,
see also pp. 283–284), or whether we are dealing with a bilingual
individual (e.g. Matras 2009: 97–98; Grosjean 2024). Complications
around the concept of an L1 and bilinguals as test participants are
briefly highlighted in the introduction (p. 17) and Chapter 1 (p. 32).
Without wanting to remove the distinction entirely, I think
significantly more clarity on language profiles would be needed in
order to enable generalisations (as also advocated in Chapter 2). The
third is the fact that translation and interpreting are “a cluster of
complex processes” (p. 343) – this is before we take the social
surroundings of language use into account (e.g. p. 51) (e.g.
Tagliamonte 2025) – such that the combination of multiple methods is
often more beneficial than the application of one method, as the
measurements that are possible are proxies for different cognitive and
motor processes. This is in fact advocated for in various chapters in
the volume and would certainly enable a more complete picture of the
situation gained in any experimental setting (e.g. p. 97).
Minor comments on chapters: In Chapter 2 (p. 57), the TOEFL and IELTS
assessments are described as “rigorous” with regard to assessing
language level, yet with the cautioning comment that the different
skills tested may not be relevant to “the naturalistic task being
set”. The issue with “tried and tested language assessment
instruments” (p. 57) is that there is usually an industry behind these
that will prepare takers for the exact task type, etc. This may
reflect positively in the specific test environment but their test
performance may not be an accurate estimate of language ability in
applied contexts. In Chapter 3 (p. 75), self-administered online
surveys are described as having “no interviewer effects”, which does
not always seem the case, as e.g. Vieregge (2025: 238) observed in her
questionnaire application where a participant commented on the
questionnaire as “der Test” (the test). There may not be a
straightforward interviewer effect but there still seems to be an
observer effect. In Chapter 5 (p. 116), I wonder to what extent
qualitative content analysis carried out with ATLAS.ti, an AI-powered
tool, lives up to replicability standards (see e.g. Thomas, Romasanta
& Pujol Priego 2026). In Chapter 8 (p. 187) speech recording is
described as non-invasive and any potential psychological harm is
dismissed. In light of especially studies on accent bias and the like
(e.g. Levon et al. 2021) and the fact that language use and identity
are closely intertwined, not necessarily in any straightforward way
(see already Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens 1964: 105), I find this
assessment rather reductionist. In the same chapter (p. 192), the
sentence “[y]ounger scholars may wish to follow recommendations of
more experienced colleagues and more standard approaches to stay on
the safe side” is likely well meant but comes across as limiting
initially. In a way, researchers of any age are always disruptors,
innovators, and visionaries. In Chapter 9 (p. 227), the authors state
that “it would certainly help if researchers of the same research
community could use the same hardware and software for data collection
and analysis”, which is certainly true but also globally impractical
for any number of reasons. In Chapter 11 (p. 269), the authors comment
that certain programmes have “a steep learning curve and require
advanced technical skills”, which is refreshingly honest and shows the
limitations that are often faced in short-term setups.
Minor typographic aspects: In Chapter 6 on p. 136 Figure 1 and on p.
137 Figure 2 do not seem to be integrated with the text. In Chapter 7
on p. 163 “that” in the second-to-last paragraph after “noting”
gardenpaths the reader and on p. 173 “not everything are” needs to be
“not everything is an advantage”. In Chapter 9 on p. 226, a sentence
seems to be repeated at start and end of paragraph two.
REFERENCES
Grosjean, François. 2024. On Bilinguals and Bilingualism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gumul, Ewa. 2020. Retrospective protocols in simultaneous
interpreting: Testing the effect of retrieval cues. Linguistica
Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies 19. 152–171.
Halliday, Michael, Angus McIntosh & Peter Strevens. 1964. The
linguistic sciences and language teaching. London: Longmans.
Levon, Erez, Devyani Sharma, Dominic Watt, Amanda Cardoso & Yang Ye.
2021. Accent Bias and Perceptions of Professional Competence in
England. Journal of English Linguistics 49(4). 355–388.
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2025. Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, Llewellyn D. W., Angelo Kenneth G. Romasanta & Laia Pujol
Priego. 2026. Jagged competencies: Measuring the reliability of
generative AI in academic research. Journal of Business Research 203.
115804.
Vieregge, Annika. 2025. Bewertung und Variation der Präpositionalkasus
im Deutschen. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Vranjes, Jelena, Geert Brône & Kurt Feyaerts. 2018. On the role of
gaze in the organization of turn-taking and sequence organization in
interpreter-mediated dialogue. Language and Dialogue 8(3). 439–467.
Williams, Robert. 2006. Using cognitive ethnography to study
instruction. In Sasha Barab, Kenneth Hay & Daniel Hickey (eds.), The
International Conference of the Learning Sciences: Indiana University
2006. Proceedings of ICLS 2006, Volume 2, 838–844. Bloomington,
Indiana: International Society of the Learning Science.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Victoria B. Fendel (D.Phil. Oxford, 2018) is a lecturer at Lady
Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, one of the editors of the
Registered Reports in Linguistics, and language leader for Ancient
Greek in the PARSEME/UniDive COST initiative. Her research focuses on
bilingualism and language contact (Oxford University Press, 2022),
multi-word expressions (Brill, 2025) in literary, epigraphic, and
papyrological sources, and on the development of digital tools for
large corpora (Language Science Press, 2024).



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