Effects of cognate status and language of therapy during intensive semantic naming treatment in a case of severe nonfluent bilingual aphasia

Abstract

As bilingualism becomes less exceptional in the world, and with the growing incidence of stroke and aphasia, a better understanding of how bilingualism affects aphasia recovery is increasingly important. The present study examined the effect of intensive semantic naming therapy in three phases (Spanish, English and mixed) on within- and across-language generalization for cognates and non-cognates, in a bilingual individual with chronic, severe expressive aphasia. We hypothesized that cognates would positively influence cross-linguistic generalization, which might be more likely to occur from L2 to L1. Results indicate relative increases in confrontation naming ability in the following conditions: trained versus untrained, L1 versus L2 or mixed and non-cognates versus cognates. This participant demonstrated a pattern of results consistent with a differential recovery pattern in which presentation of treatment in both languages and training of cognates may have promoted interference, thus increasing the activation threshold, and lowering performance under these conditions.

• bilingualism
• aphasia
• cognates
• cross-linguistic generalization
• intensive language therapy
• constraint-induced language therapy

Acknowledgements

The authors thank GLP for her patience and perseverance over the many hours of testing, and her family for not giving up on her in spite of the medical system's bleak prognosis. The authors also thank Erika Connor for interrater data analysis in Spanish. Finally, the authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Declaration of interest: The current study was conducted with funding to the PI (Kurland) from the Faculty Research Grant/Healy Endowment Grant programme, Office of the Vice Provost for Research, UMass Amherst.