Imageability effects in normal Spanish–English bilingual adults and in aphasia: Evidence from naming to definition and semantic priming tasks

Background: Whereas the effect of imageability on lexical access has received attention in normal monolingual individuals and in individuals with aphasia, its effect on normal bilingual access and in bilingual aphasia has not been systematically addressed.Aim: The goal of the present experiment was to examine the effects of imageability in normal bilingual adults and in one patient with bilingual aphasia by addressing the following questions: (a) Is there a difference in language performance in early L2 bilinguals? (b) Is there a difference between concrete and abstract words across both languages? (c) Is there a difference between accuracy on a naming to definition task and semantic priming task across language and imageability?Methods & Procedures: A total of 15 normal Spanish–English bilingual adults and 1 bilingual aphasic individual performed two tasks – a naming to definition task and a semantic priming task in English and in Spanish. The targets in both tasks were either concrete or abstract nouns and the words were translation equivalents in the two languages. Naming accuracy in both languages and for both levels of imageability was measured during the naming to definition task. Mean reaction times and accuracy rates to judge relatedness of word pairs on the semantic priming task were also measured.Results: Results indicated that across tasks, performance was better in English than in Spanish, indicating an English dominance in the normal bilingual adults, although performance was the same across languages in the aphasic patient. Across tasks and languages, responses were faster and more accurate for concrete words than abstract words. Finally, retrieval of abstract words was significantly more difficult during naming to definition than during semantic priming, reflecting a processing difference between concrete and abstract words in retrieval of their respective phonological forms.Conclusions: These results highlight differences between concrete and abstract words in conceptual/semantic representations and phonological retrieval that are notably consistent across both languages in a bilingual individual. Data from the one bilingual aphasic individual suggest the possibility of a systematic deterioration of the normal bilingual language system.     

Picture naming and identification in bilingual speakers of Spanish and English with and without aphasia

Background: Equivalent language knowledge is assumed in interpreting assessment results from bilingual speakers with aphasia, regardless of pre‐morbid language experience. Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the affect of pre‐morbid language skill, estimated from the performance of 20 neurologically normal bilinguals, on picture identification and naming in four bilingual speakers of Spanish and English with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Statistical and qualitative analyses of proficiency, language use patterns, literacy, and concentrated language experience were investigated in relation to between‐language differences in picture identification and naming. Outcomes & Results: Three patterns of impairment were identified: higher scores in English consistent with pre‐morbid skill, higher scores in Spanish inconsistent with pre‐morbid skill, and variable performance inconsistent with pre‐morbid skill. Conclusions: Results suggest that interpretation of language impairment in adult bilingual speakers within a given bilingual community must consider expected variability in the proficiency and use of the languages spoken and the differential effects of proficiency on expressive and receptive language performance.     

Modeling activation and effective connectivity of VWFA in same script bilinguals

Previous neuroimaging research revealed a small area in the inferior occipito–temporal cortex (VWFA), which seems to be involved in recognition of written words. The specialized response of the VWFA to words could result from repeated exposure to print in the course of functional fine‐tuning of the brain. Research with bilingual speakers holds promise in helping to reveal response properties of the VWFA by assessing its sensitivity to language proficiency, word‐form similarity, and meaning overlap across two languages. Using fMRI, we compared VWFA activity for cognate and homograph prime‐target pairs in a group of fluent Spanish–English speakers. Cognates share form and meaning in two languages, while homographs only share form. Relative to baseline, the VWFA showed repetition suppression to pairs of homographs, but not to pairs of cognates, suggesting that this area is sensitive to word meaning. The different response to cognates and homographs was only observed when English was the prime language and Spanish was the target language. To help explain this result we compared patterns of effective connectivity between the VWFA and other parts of the reading network implicated in semantic and phonological processing. Our neural models showed that English targets engaged a direct ventral route from the VWFA to the frontal lobe and Spanish targets engaged an indirect dorsal route. Considering that frontal cortex has been implicated in semantic processing, a direct connection to this area could signal a fast and automatic access to meaning and would facilitate early semantic influences in visual word recognition. Hum Brain Mapp 35:2543–2560, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .     

Semantic feature analysis treatment in Spanish–English and French–English bilingual aphasia

Background: Edmonds and Kiran (2006 Edmonds, L. and Kiran, S. 2006. Effect of semantic based treatment on cross linguistic generalisation in bilingual aphasia.. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 49: 729–748. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reported that training lexical retrieval in one language resulted in within‐language and cross‐language generalisation in three bilingual (English–Spanish) patients with aphasia.

Aims: The present experiment continues this line of research, repeating a similar procedure with new patients and examining a broader range of factors that may affect generalisation patterns.

Methods & Procedures: Four participants (two Spanish–English and two French–English speakers) with anomia post CVA received a semantic feature‐based treatment aimed at improving naming of English or Spanish/French nouns. Using a multiple baseline design, generalisation to untrained semantically related and unrelated items in each language was measured during periods of therapy first in one language, then in the other.

Outcomes & Results: All patients improved their naming of the trained items in the trained language, although to varying degrees. Within‐language generalisation to semantically related items occurred in two Spanish–English patients and one French–English patient. Cross‐language generalisation to translations and semantically related items occurred only for one French–English patient.

Conclusions: The impact of the intervention is very clear. The semantic feature‐based practice is linked to the gains made, and accounts for the predominance of semantic naming errors after treatment. Possible explanations for the different patterns of generalisation are considered in terms of the various factors including each patient's pre‐stroke language proficiency, age of acquisition of each language, post‐stroke level of language impairment, and type and severity of aphasia.     

Lexical-semantic representation in bilingual aphasia: Findings from semantic priming and cognate repetition priming

Background: While many studies have investigated the nature of language organisation in monolingual speakers with aphasia, our understanding of bilingual aphasia lags far behind. Only a handful of studies have employed on-line psycholinguistic experimental methods to explore the nature of language representation and processing in bilingual speakers with aphasia. Improving our understanding of how language is organised and processed in bilingual speakers with aphasia is central to the development of effective impairment-level language treatments. Cognate/noncognate representation and semantic representation are two key aspects of bilingual language organisation that are yet to be explored in depth in bilingual speakers with aphasia.

Aims: The present study aimed to investigate (1) whether semantic representation was shared across the two languages of a bilingual speaker with aphasia and (2) whether cognate words would produce a processing advantage relative to noncognate words (as has been found in neurologically-normal younger bilingual adults).

Methods & Procedures: A 70-year-old bilingual Italian/English speaker, who presented with nonfluent aphasia and apraxia of speech, completed two priming experiments: a semantic priming experiment and a cognate repetition priming experiment.

Outcomes & Results: In the semantic priming experiment, the participant demonstrated large priming effects in both within-language conditions and one cross-language condition. The finding of priming in at least one of the cross-language conditions provides some corroboration for shared semantic representation in this bilingual individual with aphasia. In the cognate repetition priming experiment, the participant produced a language-specific cognate advantage in English, for words repeated in the same language. For words repeated in a different language condition (i.e., as their translation equivalent), the participant produced a processing advantage for noncognate words.

Conclusions: The findings of this study provided support for shared semantic representation in bilingual speakers following aphasia; however, the results also suggested that aphasia can disrupt normal lexical access processes. Results in relation to cognate versus noncognate processing suggested that bilingual speakers with aphasia may not, necessarily, always display a cognate advantage. Overall, the present study showed that language processing in bilingual speakers with aphasia is highly complex and is dependent upon the intricate interplay between the speaker’s premorbid language proficiency, inhibitory processing deficits that occur with normal aging and postmorbid language impairment and recovery patterns.     

Processing semantic anomalies in two languages: an electrophysiological exploration in both languages of Spanish-English bilinguals

The latency of the brain response to semantic anomalies (N400 effect) has been found to be longer in a bilingual's second language (L2) than in their first language (L1) and/or to that seen in monolinguals. This has been explained in terms of late exposure to L2, although age of exposure and language proficiency are often highly correlated. We thus examined the relative contributions of these factors not only in L2 but also in L1 in a group of Spanish-English bilinguals for whom age of exposure and language proficiency were not highly correlated by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to semantically congruous/incongruous words completing written sentences. We also divided our bilinguals into a Spanish-dominant subset who had late exposure and reduced vocabulary proficiency [as measured by Boston Naming Test (BNT) and Verbal Fluency Scores] in L2 (English) relative to L1 (Spanish) and an English-dominant group who had early exposure to both their languages although greater proficiency in English than in Spanish. In both groups, the N400 effect was significantly later in the nondominant than the dominant language. Although this slowing could be due to late exposure to English in the Spanish-dominant group, late exposure cannot explain the slowing in Spanish in the English-dominant group. Overall, we found that vocabulary proficiency and age of exposure are both important in determining the timing of semantic integration effects during written sentence processing--with vocabulary proficiency predicting the timing of semantic analysis in L1 and both age of exposure and language proficiency, although highly correlated, making additional small but uncorrelated contributions to the speed of semantic analysis/integration in L2.     

Prophylactic treatments for anomia in the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia: cross-language transfer

Background: Treatment studies for anomia in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) have rarely compared multiple treatments in the same individual, and few anomia treatment studies have included participants with the logopenic variant of PPA (lvPPA).

Aims: The goals of this study were to evaluate two types of treatment for anomia in a bilingual participant (ND) with lvPPA, and to examine possible cross-language transfer of treatment effects.

Methods & Procedures: ND is a Norwegian-English bilingual woman with lvPPA who began this study at the age of 69. In the phonological treatment, ND listened to a word while viewing a corresponding picture, and she repeated the word. In the orthographic treatment, ND read a word out loud while viewing the corresponding picture, and she then copied the word. Both treatments were conducted in English, and accuracy for three tasks (oral naming, written naming, and naming to definition) was assessed in English and Norwegian. The treatment occurred over a one-year period, with eight sessions at the laboratory during the first month, followed by monthly laboratory sessions and thrice-weekly home practice sessions during the subsequent 11 months. Post-treatment assessments were conducted at 1 week, 8 months, 1 year, 20 months, and 3 years.

Outcomes & Results: Compared to untrained items, the orthographic treatment resulted in greater English written naming accuracy. This treatment also resulted in cross-language transfer: greater Norwegian oral naming and naming to definition accuracy. The phonological treatment resulted in marginally greater English oral naming accuracy, but it did not have a significant effect on naming accuracy in Norwegian.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that the orthographic treatment was effective in strengthening the orthographic representations of the treated items, which facilitated ND’s written naming performance. The pattern of cross-language transfer suggests that the orthographic treatment also strengthened the language-independent semantic representations of the treated items, thereby facilitating access to their Norwegian phonological representations.     

English performance of proficient bilingual adults on the Boston Naming Test

Background: The Boston Naming Test is widely used in several versions and languages. However, there are few studies of its use with bilingual adults. A recent study by Kohnert, Hernandez, and Bates (1998) found that Spanish/English bilingual adults scored well below unilingual adults. Aims: This study tested two hypotheses. (1) Fluently bilingual adults will obtain significantly lower scores than unilingual, English-speaking adults on the BNT, in English. (2) The order of difficulty of the 60 items will differ for the bilingual and unilingual groups. Methods & Procedures: This study compared the English performance of unilingual speakers (n = 42) to that of two groups of bilingual adults: Spanish/English (n = 32) and French/English (n = 49). All bilingual participants learned English as a second language as children and claimed high levels of ability in English. All participants completed high school (range 11–27 years of schooling). The three groups did not differ significantly in age or education. An ANOVA compared the mean Total Correct obtained by the three groups. Outcomes & Results: Both hypotheses were confirmed. The mean scores (Total Corrrect) for the bilingual groups (42.6 and 39.5/60) were both significantly below the mean score of the unilingual group (50.9/60) but not different from each other. Item difficulty showed some similarities but also important differences across groups. Conclusions: The English language norms cannot be used, even with proficient bilingual speakers. Cultural factors appear less important than bilingualism. Some items on the Boston Naming Test have more than one correct name and suggestions for “lenient” scoring are given.     

On the translation routes in early and highly proficient bilingual people: Evidence from an individual with semantic impairment

Background: One of the major interests in bilingualism research has been the extent to which the two lexicons of a bilingual speaker are directly linked and the role that this hypothetical link plays during language production. Up to now, most of the research on this issue has focused on either low or high proficient late‐bilingual people, whereas little information has been provided on the functionality of this hypothesised link in highly proficient bilinguals who acquired their two languages early in life.

Aims: The aim of the present study is to provide information on the functionality of the direct link between the two lexicons of early and highly proficient bilingual people.

Methods & Procedures: In this report we assess the functionality of lexical links between translation words in an early and highly proficient Catalan–Spanish bilingual patient (JFF) who suffers from a semantic deficit as a consequence of Alzheimer's disease. The integrity of JFF's conceptual and lexical representations is examined by means of semantic, picture‐naming, and translation tasks. We pay special attention to JFF's translation performance to assess whether such performance is affected by his semantic deficit.

Outcomes & Results: We argue that if lexical links between translation words are functional, then such links would guarantee error‐free production in translation. Contrary to this prediction, errors observed in JFF's translation performance indicated that the semantic system was involved in JFF's forward and backward translation.

Conclusions: On the basis of this result, we suggest that lexical links in early and highly proficient bilingual people are not functional.     

Accessibility of the nondominant language in picture naming: A counterintuitive effect of dementia on bilingual language production

The current study tested the assumption that bilinguals with dementia regress to using primarily the dominant language. Spanish-English bilinguals with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 29), and matched bilingual controls (n = 42) named Boston Naming Test pictures in their dominant and nondominant languages. Surprisingly, differences between patients and controls were larger using dominant-language than nondominant-language naming scores, and bilinguals with AD were either more likely than controls (in English-dominant bilinguals), or equally likely (in Spanish-dominant bilinguals), to name some pictures in the nondominant language that they could not produce in their dominant language. These findings suggest that dominant language testing may provide the best assessment of language deficits in bilingual AD, and argue against the common notion that the nondominant language is particularly susceptible to dementia. The greater vulnerability of the dominant language may reflect the increased probability of AD affecting richer semantic representations associated with dominant compared to nondominant language names.     

Sentence production in Swahili–English bilingual agrammatic speakers

Background: It has been argued that agrammatic speakers' production of sentences in derived order is impaired (The Derived Order Problem Hypothesis, DOP-H), and that the underlying deficit in bilingual individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia may cause different surface manifestations in the languages when they differ in terms of their grammatical morphology. The current study presents results of a study on sentence production in Swahili-English bilingual agrammatic speakers. The two languages, Swahili and English, differ significantly in terms of their verbal morphology.

Aims: The current study tested the production of sentences in base and derived orders of arguments in the two languages of Swahili-English bilingual agrammatic speakers.

Methods & Procedures: Eight agrammatic and eight non-brain damaged individuals participated in the study. A sentence elicitation test was used to examine the production of sentences in base and derived word orders in Swahili and English. The base order condition consisted of active and subject-cleft sentences, whereas the derived order condition tested passive and object-cleft sentences.

Outcomes & Results: The non-brain-damaged individuals performed at ceiling in both languages. The agrammatic speakers' results, however, show sentences in derived order condition and were more difficult to produce than those in base order, similarly across the two languages irrespective of their morphological differences. Moreover, the embedded sentences were also more difficult to produce than simple sentences for agrammatic speakers.

Conclusions: The current data partially support the DOP-H and provide new insight into sentence production deficit of bilingual individuals with agrammatic Broca's aphasia. The findings are discussed with respect to the theories of sentence production in agrammatic speakers.     

“Penguins don't fly”: An investigation into the effect of typicality on picture naming in people with aphasia

Background: Previous research has highlighted psycholinguistic variables influencing naming ability for individuals with aphasia, including: familiarity, frequency, age of acquisition, imageability, operativity, and length (Nickels & Howard, 1995) and a potential link between typicality and generalisation to untreated items in intervention (Kiran, Sandberg, & Sebastian, 2011). However, the effect of concept typicality (the extent to which an item can be considered a prototype of a category) on naming in aphasia warrants further examination.

Aims: To investigate first whether typicality can be reliably rated across a range of natural semantic categories and second whether, and if so in which direction, typicality influences naming performance for people with aphasia. To provide quantitative and qualitative information on typicality for a set of stimuli for use in future research.

Methods & Procedures: Typicality ratings were obtained and the results compared with those in the existing literature. The influence of typicality on picture naming was investigated employing both matched sets (high and low typicality matched for other psycholinguistic variables) and logistic regression analyses for the group and individual participants with aphasia (n?=?20).

Outcomes & Results: Typicality rating correlated strongly with ratings obtained in previous research (Rosch, 1975: r = .798, N?=?35, p < .001; Uyeda & Mandler, 1980: r = .844, N?=?47, p < .001). Typicality was a significant predictor of picture naming for the group and some individuals, with generally better performance for typical items. This was demonstrated in both matched sets and regression analyses. However, other psycholinguistic variables proved more strongly related to naming success, particularly age of acquisition.

Conclusions: Typicality can be rated reliably and should be considered alongside other psycholinguistic variables when investigating word retrieval and intervention in aphasia. Further research is necessary to accurately model the direction of typicality effects found in word retrieval. Finally, the differing nature, size, and internal structure of categories require further exploration when investigating typicality effects.     

Multilingual dyslexia in university students: Reading and writing patterns in three languages

We investigated reading and writing in two domestic languages (Swedish and Finnish) and one foreign language (English) among multilingual university students with (n?=?20) versus without dyslexia (n?=?20). Our analyses encompassed overall speed and accuracy measures and an in-depth analysis of grapheme–phoneme–grapheme errors and inflectional errors. Dyslexic impairments were most conspicuous in word and sentence segmentation, accuracy in oral text reading, single word writing to dictation and free writing across the three languages, most prominently in English. The writing tasks exhibited significantly higher proportions of phoneme-to-grapheme errors in the dyslexia group, especially in English, and marginal differences in inflectional errors, again discernible in English. The results indicate that language proficiency and orthographic depth modulate the appearance of high-performing multilinguals' dyslexic problems in reading and writing. These problems surfaced most clearly in a less proficient foreign, orthographically opaque language.     

Codeswitching and discourse markers in the narratives of a bilingual speaker with aphasia

Background: Codeswitching and discourse markers are proposed as potentially compensatory means to promote fluency in bilingual people diagnosed with nonfluent aphasia.

Aim: This paper examined four linguistic markers of aphasia and fluency—grammaticality, complexity, codeswitching, and discourse markers—in the narratives of a bilingual speaker, in order to assess whether and to what extent these phenomena are manifested in the two languages of a person with aphasia.

Methods & Procedures: Sixteen narratives per language were collected, using a cue word procedure, from a 59-year-old Yiddish–English bilingual with diagnosed moderate nonfluent aphasia. Analyses of frequency and locus of ungrammaticality, sentence complexity, codeswitching, and discourse markers were conducted as well as motivations for codeswitching.

Outcomes & Results: Findings showed more ungrammaticality in English (L2) than Yiddish (L1), relatively similar levels of complexity, and very similar use of discourse markers in both languages. Codeswitching was more prevalent in Yiddish (L1), motivated by lexical access difficulties, whereas in English (L2), codeswitching was motivated both by lexical access and cross-linguistic lexicalization differences.

Conclusions: Differential use of codeswitching across the languages of a bilingual person with nonfluent aphasia shows that different strategies are used to enhance fluency and compensate for ungrammaticality in each language. Clinically, the study shows the importance of assessment in both languages, and suggests that intervention in both languages should be considered pending further investigation.     

Bilingual children: cross-sectional relations of psychiatric syndrome severity and dual language proficiency

The severity of child psychiatric disorders is commonly associated with child language delays. However, the characteristics of these associations in the fast-growing population of bilingual children remain unknown. To begin to address this gap, we studied a unique sample of Spanish-English bilingual children with significant parent-reported psychopathology (n = 29), focusing on their language proficiencies and psychiatric severity using the Child Behavior Check List. We present cross-sectional analyses of associations of general and specific language proficiency in Spanish and English with the severity of specific psychiatric syndromes. We found Spanish language-proficiency scores to have negative correlations with a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, particularly externalizing (i.e., delinquency and aggression) symptoms (r = -.38 to -.61, p < or = .05). English scores were similarly associated. Dual language tests covering multiple specific language dimensions explained a large proportion (51%) of overall variance in aggression symptoms and also important proportions (40%) of total and attentional symptoms. While children's proficiency levels in both Spanish and English showed similar associations with the symptom severity measures (explaining close to 20% of the symptom variance; r(sp) = -.44, p < .01), these proficiency levels explain nonconverging variance in children's symptomatology. The findings suggest that clinical evaluation of language functioning is often needed in such populations and that it should be comprehensive and include both languages. Such thorough evaluation of bilingual children suffering from psychopathology will help us to precisely identify (1) language deficits, (2) specific relations of these deficits to the child's psychopathology, (3) differential implications of communication at home (e.g., in Spanish) and at school (e.g., in English) for clinical presentation and the child's competence in those differing contexts, and (4) language of choice for therapy, evaluation, and educational services. The findings are discussed in the context of clinical and conceptual implications and future research needs.     

Direct evidence of the left caudate’s role in bilingual control: An intra-operative electrical stimulation study

Bilinguals need control mechanisms in order to switch between languages in different communication contexts (Green, 1998, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1; Price, Green, & von Studnitz, 1999, Brain, 122). There has been neural evidence showing competition to control output in L2 vs. L1 in both cortical and sub-cortical areas, when language selection is carried out (Abutalebi & Green, 2007, Journal of Neurolinguistics, 20). Here we use intra-operative direct electrical stimulation to demonstrate that the head of the left caudate is critical not only in language switching tasks but other control tasks. A bilingual Chinese-English patient was instructed to perform both language switching and switching in color-shape naming tasks during awake glioma surgery. When stimulation was applied on the left caudate, failures or difficulties in both language switching and color-shape naming were observed, with the effects greater on language switching. Stimulation to neighboring brain regions either did not affect performance or generated mild problems specific to language switching. The results provide direct evidence of the necessary role of the left caudate in language control.     

The use of the picture–word interference paradigm to examine naming abilities in aphasic individuals

Background: Although naming deficits are well documented in aphasia, on‐line measures of naming processes have been little investigated. The use of on‐line measures may offer further insight into the nature of aphasic naming deficits that would otherwise be difficult to interpret when using off‐line measures.

Aims: The temporal activation of semantic and phonological processes was tracked in older normal control and aphasic individuals using a picture–word interference paradigm. The purpose of the study was to examine how word interference results can augment and/or corroborate standard language testing in the aphasic group, as well as to examine temporal patterns of activation in the aphasic group when compared to a normal control group.

Methods & Procedures: A total of 20 older normal individuals and 11 aphasic individuals participated. Detailed measures of each aphasic individual's language and naming skills were obtained. A visual picture–word interference paradigm was used in which the words bore either a semantic, phonological, or no relationship to 25 pictures. These competitor words were presented at stimulus onset asynchronies of ?300 ms,?+300 ms, and 0 ms.

Outcomes & Results: Analyses of naming RTs in both groups revealed significant early semantic interference effects, mid‐semantic interference effects, and mid‐phonological facilitation effects. A matched control‐aphasic group comparison revealed no differences in the temporal activation of effects during the course of naming. Partial support for this RT pattern was found in the aphasic naming error pattern. The aphasic group also demonstrated greater SIEs and PFEs compared to the matched control group, which indicated disruptions of the phonological processing stage. Analyses of behavioural performances of the aphasic group corroborated this finding.

Conclusions: The aphasic naming RTs results were unexpected given the results from the priming literature, which has supported the idea of slowed or reduced patterns of activation in aphasic individuals. However, analyses of naming RTs also confirmed the behavioural finding of a disruption surrounding phonological processes; thus, the analyses of naming latencies offers another potential means of pinpointing breakdowns of lexical access in individuals with aphasia.