Relatore: Professor Bruno OSIMO - Bruno Osimo, traduzioni ...

i.e. they assume that human cognition is information processing. According to
Ericsson and Simon’s model, humans keep information in different memory
stores, characterized by different access and storage capabilities: short-term
memory (STM) present easy access but severely limited storage space, whereas
long-term memory (LTM) is characterized by more difficult access and larger
storage space (Bernardini 1999).
Information input will first be heeded by the STM and when its capacity
and storage time is exhausted, the information is transferred to the LTM.
A certain loss both prior and during this transfer is assumed, but it does
not seem to be a substantial loss (M. A. Schmidt 2005: 27).
Only information present in STM, that is information which is currently
being processed, can be directly accessed and reported; LTM contains
information which has left consciousness, but which can later be retrieved
back to STM for further processing.
The STM is also called working memory (WM); it is the primary site of
the procedural memory. LTM, by contrast, serves as the vessel for the
declarative memory (M. A. Schmidt 2005). As far as the translation process is
concerned, it is important to consider the function and capacity of the STM
because translating relies as much on procedural knowledge as on declarative
knowledge. “This distinction is crucial because the cognitive processes, as well
as information that is not currently being processed, cannot be reported but
must be inferred by the analyst on the basis of the verbalizations” (Bernardini
1999: 2).
The implications of Ericsson and Simon’s model are manifold.
3. 2. 1. IMPLICATIONS OF ERICSSON AND SIMON’S MODEL
First of all, according to Ericsson and Simon’s model, only concurrent
verbalization of thoughts exhaustively reflect the mental states of a subject
carrying out a relatively long task, which takes longer than ten seconds to
complete, according to Ericsson and Simon (Bernardini 1999). It is important
to notice that a cognitive process takes longer when the subject thinks aloud.
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