Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of conversational language demands on lexical retrieval in the discourse of bilingual speakers with aphasia. Specifically, we explored how normally occurring crosslinguistic variability in lexical retrieval manifests in the discourse of bilinguals with aphasia when language demand of the environment varies. Discourse analyses of conversation samples were conducted for three bilingual Spanish/English speakers with aphasia in monolingual English, monolingual Spanish and bilingual contexts. Results revealed contextual variation in lexical retrieval that were related to pre-morbid language skill. Manifestation of a linguistic impairment is influenced by the context (monolingual or bilingual) in which the information is gathered. Analysis of discourse samples can provide additional insight into the subtle differences in the characteristics of the impairment in monolingual and bilingual contexts.