Abstract
IntroductionThe aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke.MethodsThis is a case series analysis of four Afrikaans/English bilingual aphasic individuals following a left cerebrovascular accident. Error analysis of confrontation naming data in both languages was performed. Research questions were directed toward the between language differences in lexical retrieval abilities, types of errors produced and degree of cognate overlap.ResultsThree of the four participants showed significantly higher naming accuracy in first acquired language (L1) relative to the second acquired language (L2) and the largest proportion of error type for those three participants in both L1 and L2 was omission. One of the four participants (linguistically balanced) showed no between language accuracy difference. Regarding cognate overlap, there was a trend for higher accuracy for higher cognate words (compared to low).DiscussionThis study showed that naming performance in these four individuals was reflective of their relative language proficiency and use patterns prior to their stroke. These findings are consistent with the hierarchical model, in normal bilingual speakers and with persons with bilingual aphasia.
Highlights
The aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke
Speech-language clinicians need to be cognisant of the potential variability of language backgrounds of people with aphasia and knowledgeable regarding the mechanisms of lexical representation and processing in bilingual aphasia so that effective diagnostic and rehabilitative strategies can be employed
According to the hierarchical model, which we present as our working model for bilingualism, the strength of connections between the semantic system and each lexicon is dependent on use and proficiency, which are largely related to each other
Summary
The aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke. Connections between the layers allow bidirectional spread of activation (e.g. semantics ↔ lemma ↔ phonemes). During confrontation naming of the word cat, visual analysis allows for identification of the picture with activation to corresponding semantic units or features, with bidirectional spread of information to lemma and phonological layers. This cascading process occurs in reverse during comprehension with bottom-up activated phonological nodes spreading connections to lemma nodes, to corresponding semantic nodes
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