What are the processes underlying the judgments of translation? And what is the role of language proficiency?This study addresses these questions by examining how Chinese-English bilinguals evaluate poetry translations. Participantswere shown haikus in Chinese and the corresponding English translations and were asked to rate the translation quality. TheEnglish translations ranged from literal to free style and differed in two source text factors — phrase order and lexical choice.Results indicated an interaction between translation style and language proficiency, with the high proficiency bilinguals givingfree translations higher ratings. Furthermore, the analyses of eye movements revealed that, (a) in contrast to low proficiencybilinguals, high proficiency bilinguals tended to integrate discourse information regardless of intra-text re-ordering, and (b)among the good quality translations, the phrase order effect was more prominent than the lexical effect. These findings suggestthe interplaying roles of language proficiency and linguistic factors in translation.

The ability to regulate mental processes is a critical component of human cognition. People vary in their ability ofcognitive control, with some showing more focused attention and less distractions from environmental stimulus. Who arethese people and what makes them better at cognitive control? This study attempts to answer these questions by examiningthe individual differences in cognitive control using variants of executive function tasks. Participants were given a flankertask which included congruent, incongruent and neutral trials, and all the trials were randomized and blocked based ondifferent visual angles of flankers ranging from 4.6 to 0.9. Participants were then given a standard Simon task (measure ofinhibition) and color-shape task (measure of switch). Results indicate that as the visual angle decreases, the interferencefrom flankers increases. More importantly, people who are better at inhibition or switch show a lesser extent of increasein interference.