Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between language control, semantic control, and nonverbal control in bilingual aphasia. Twelve bilingual adults with aphasia (BPWA) and 20 age-matched bilingual adults (AMBA) completed a language control task, semantic control task, and nonverbal control task, each designed to examine resistance to distractor interference. AMBA and BPWA exhibited significant effects of control on all tasks. To examine efficiency of control, conflict magnitudes for each task and group were analyzed. Findings revealed that AMBA exhibited larger conflict magnitudes on the semantic control task and nonverbal control task compared to the language control task, whereas BPWA exhibited no difference in conflict magnitudes between the language control task and semantic control task. Further analysis revealed that BPWA semantic control conflict magnitude was smaller than AMBA semantic control conflict magnitude. Taken together, these findings suggest that BPWA present with diminished effects of semantic control. In the final analysis, conflict magnitudes across tasks were correlated. For AMBA, semantic control and nonverbal control conflict magnitudes were significantly correlated, suggesting that these two types of control are related. For BPWA, language control and nonverbal control conflict magnitudes were significantly correlated; however, this finding may capture effects of domain general cognitive control as a function of increased cognitive load, rather than domain general cognitive control as a function of language control.
Highlights
As the population ages, the prevalence of stroke and, aphasia increases
The language control task and nonverbal control task elicited interference and conflict resolution, referred to as the congruency effect, and the semantic control task elicited semantic interference, referred to as the relatedness effect
Based on previous work showing that people without aphasia exhibit slower response times (RTs) and/or lower accuracy on incongruent trials compared to congruent trials on verbal and nonverbal control tasks and semantic interference [17,28,48,49], it was hypothesized that age-matched bilingual adults (AMBA) would demonstrate the congruency effect on the language control task and nonverbal control task and the relatedness effect on the semantic control task
Summary
The prevalence of stroke and, aphasia increases. A key feature of aphasia is impaired lexical access, indicating that activation of the target word or inhibition of the lexical competitor is disrupted. There is an additional factor of language control (i.e., activating the target language and inhibiting the non-target language). The relationship between lexical access and language control in bilingual persons with aphasia (BPWA) is unclear. To best help BPWA improve their ability to successfully access target words during everyday communication, we need to better understand how they manage language control. An exploration of language control in bilingual aphasia would be incomplete without taking into account semantic control and nonverbal control. Semantic control is the ability to select one linguistic item, e.g., apple, while suppressing its semantic competitors, e.g., orange, cherry, and strawberry
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