Fluency in the narratives of a bilingual person with non-fluent aphasia and a neurogenic stutter
-
1
Queens College, United States
-
2
Bar Ilan University, Israel
The aim of this study is to analyze the occurrence of three fluency features in an attempt to distinguish the relative impact of aphasia and stuttering on the narrative production of a bilingual person with a moderate nonfluent aphasia and a moderate neurogenic stutter.
A 59-year old, Yiddish-English bilingual male, with a left-hemisphere CVA, was assessed by a certified SLP with the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT; Paradis & Libben, 1987), the Stuttering Severity Instrument-4 (SSI-4; Riley, 2009), and the Quick Assessment for Apraxia of Speech (Tanner & Culbertson, 1999). BAT performance showed similar performance in Yiddish and English with higher scores for comprehension than production (with particular difficulty in dictation of sentences). Yiddish abilities exceeded English for comprehension of complex commands, syntactic comprehension, synonyms, and antonyms (60-75%) vs (20-40%). The SSI-4 results showed that the participant’s speech was marked by prolongations, repetitions of sounds, words, and syllables, and blocks. The average duration of his three longest stuttering events was two seconds and he demonstrated no physical concomitants. The Quick Assessment for Apraxia of Speech did not reveal oral apraxia, however, he exhibited a mild-moderate difficulty planning and sequencing words of increasing phonemic complexity.
The participant (b. New York, 1951) is a native speaker of Yiddish and bilingual in English from age six. Prior to his stroke, Yiddish was used more than English, mainly for teaching and Talmud study; English was used at home with family. After the stroke, English became dominant, used with family at home and for therapy.
The study was conducted eight years after the stroke. Sixteen narratives were collected in each language and analyzed for the three aspects of fluency: Breakdown fluency, Repair fluency and Speed fluency. For Breakdown fluency, unfilled and filled pauses and hesitations were measured. For Repair fluency, repetitions, self-corrections and false starts were examined. And for Speed fluency, articulation rate, measured by syllables per minute, was calculated.
Research questions: 1) To what extent do the narratives of a bilingual speaker with aphasia show cross-linguistic differences on measures of breakdown, speed and repair fluency? 2) Is fluency influenced by language exposure? 3) To what extent can fluency markers distinguish between aphasia and stuttering?
Preliminary analysis of four narratives (two in each language) showed that most dysfluency fell into the Breakdown category, with more silent pauses in Yiddish than English. Yiddish also had more Repair fluency than English. Speed fluency varied widely as a function of the topic of the narrative (from 3.52-8.12 syllables per minute). These findings lead to the hypothesis that Yiddish is somewhat more impaired in terms of fluency due to limited exposure. Further analyses will clarify this hypothesis with the full set of narratives. In addition, analysis of narratives for stuttering phenomena will help clarify the relative impact of stuttering and aphasia in each language.
Implications for treatment will be discussed, in particular: To what extent a treatment program should focus on aphasia, stuttering or both? Which language should be used for intervention? What techniques are most like to improve fluency?
References
Neumann, Y., Walters, J., & Altman, C. (2016). Codeswitching and discourse markers in the narratives of a bilingual speaker with aphasia. Aphasiology, 31(2). DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2016.1184222
Paradis, M., & Libben, G. (1987). The assessment of bilingual aphasia. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Riley, G. D. (2009). Stuttering severity instrument for children and adults (SSI-4) (4th ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Tanner, D., & Culbertson, W. (1999). Quick assessment for apraxia of speech. Oceanside, CA:
Academic Communication Associates.
Keywords:
bilingual aphasia,
narratives,
Neurogenic stuttering,
breakdown fluency,
speed fluency,
repair fluency
Conference:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.
Presentation Type:
poster presentation
Topic:
General Submission
Citation:
Neumann
Y,
Walters
J,
Samet
D,
Barry
C,
Flatow
S,
Fichman
S and
Altman
C
(2019). Fluency in the narratives of a bilingual person with non-fluent aphasia and a neurogenic stutter.
Conference Abstract:
Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00033
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
02 May 2017;
Published Online:
25 Jan 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Yael Neumann, Queens College, Queens, United States, ynslp@aol.com