Communication disorders and bilingualism adults WK5

PSYCH 313 wk5 notes

What is Aphasia in monolinguals?

deficit in producing and or understanding spoken or written language

The ability to access ideas and thoughts through language is disrupted

Most often results from focal damage to language processing areas in the brain and is centred in the left cerebral hemisphere.

what is Aphasia in bilinguals?

If both languages of bilingual adults are

processed in the same hemisphere of the

brain, (in adjacent or overlapping areas) we

can assume that both languages will be

affected to some extent

The languages in a bilingual aphasic’s

repertoire may be affected differently

What can the client experience during acute period of Aphasia recovery?

1. substantial change across either or both languages

2. dramatic differences between the languages

3. both of the above

What are the different types of recovery patterns?

Parallel recovery

Differential recovery

selective recovery

antagonistic recovery

successive recovery

blending recovery

What is Parallel recovery?

recovery of each language is proportional to its pre-morbid proficiency.

If both languages were equally proficient before the Aphasia, they are recovered at the same time and to the same extent.

if one is more proficient than the other, it recovers better

What is differential recovery?

when recovery does not reflect pre-morbid proficiency

one language is recovered better than the other in unexpected ways.

The difference between the two may be greater than before or sometimes the previously least proficient is recovered best.

What is selective recovery?

special case of differential aphasia where symptoms are observed in only one of the bilingual’s languages.

what is antagonistic recovery?

one language is recovered first but it regresses as a second language becomes available and progresses.

Sometimes this phenomenon recurs over a period of days, weeks, months, during which language availability alternates (alternating antagonism)

What is successive recovery?

one language becomes unavailable until it is spontaneously recovered weeks or months after the other has reached a plateau.

What is a mixed or blended recovery?

some patients are unable to speak one language without continually switching back and forth.

What is paradoxical aphasia?

patient does not recover his or her main language immediately but begins recovery by speaking a language the patient has not used recently but had been exposed to through religious services or only long ago.

why is bilingual aphasia hard to assess?

because clients may be unaware of which language is more impaired.

If the clinician only speaks one of the languages, they may wrongly assume that the other language is less impaired when it is not

According to Lorenzen + Murray 2008 if a patient performs stronger in one language than the other this is because

The impact of the Aphasia is unequal in the two languages

The patient is stronger in one language because of pre stroke knowledge.

Two languages are equal but we do not know how much of a differences is needed to show a clinically significant one.

The patient was more relaxed with the examiner during one of the language tests

the translation of an English language test is more difficult than the original

The better performance in the second language tested reflects the transfer of learning from the first language tested.