Codeswitching in Bilingual Aphasia
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1
San Francisco State University, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Science, United States
Introduction
Lexical access and language control are modulated by language proficiency (Kroll & Stewart, 1994); however, little is known about how these relationships present in bilingual adults with aphasia (BPWA; Green et al., 2010; Gray & Kiran, 2018). This study employs a codeswitching paradigm to examine lexical access, language control and the role of proficiency and cognition in BPWA.
Methods
Preliminary data were collected from 7 Spanish-English bilingual healthy adults (BHA) and 5 BPWA matched on age and education. We project to recruit 15 BHA and 15 BPWA. Participants were English dominant according to a language history questionnaire. BPWA additionally completed the Boston Naming Test (BNT) in English and Spanish and Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI). All participants completed a language-based codeswitching task that included single language blocks and mixed language blocks. Participants were instructed to identify if within-language word pairs were related (carrot – celery) or unrelated (apple – shoe).
Results
Switching-costs (higher accuracy/faster response time [RT] on repeat vs switch trials in the mixed block) that tap transient control mechanisms and mixing-costs (higher accuracy/faster RTs on single language block trials vs repeat trials in the mixed block) that tap global sustained control mechanisms were examined. All reported results are significant at p < .05.
Separate paired samples t-tests were performed for each group to evaluate the switching-cost and mixing-cost on accuracy and RT across related and unrelated conditions for Spanish and English. For BHA, significant results included the following: for RT switching-cost on English trials: the unrelated repeat condition was significantly faster than the unrelated switch condition. For RT mixing-cost on Spanish trials: the related repeat condition in the mixed language blocks was significantly slower than the related condition in the single language blocks. For BPWA, results revealed a significant reverse switching-cost on accuracy for Spanish trials: the related repeat condition was less accurate than the related switch condition.
For BPWA, the relationship between switching-costs and mixing-costs and language and cognitive impairment was also examined using Spearman correlations. For English, results revealed that in the related condition, switching-cost accuracy was significantly correlated with the TONI. In the unrelated condition, RT switching-cost was significantly correlated with the English BNT. Together, this indicates that better cognition and English proficiency are associated with higher switching-costs in English. Mixing-costs were not significantly correlated with the diagnostic measures. For Spanish, results revealed that in the related condition, RT switching-cost was significantly negatively correlated with the Spanish BNT, indicating that lower Spanish proficiency is associated with higher switching-cost in Spanish. For RT mixing-cost in the related condition, there was a positive correlation with Spanish BNT, indicating that better Spanish proficiency is associated with higher mixing-cost in Spanish.
Conclusions
BHA results showed the hypothesized switching- and mixing-costs. BPWA only showed these switching- and mixing-costs when correlated with cognition and proficiency. BPWA correlation results suggest a dissociation between switching-costs and mixing-costs and how they relate to cognition and language proficiency. Further, cognition may be recruited more heavily when BPWA are switching into their dominant language.
References
Gray, T., & Kiran, S. (2018). The effect of task complexity on linguistic and non-linguistic control mechanisms in bilingual aphasia. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-19.
Green, D. W., Grogan, A., Crinion, J., Ali, N., Sutton, C., & Price, C. J. (2010). Language control and parallel recovery of language in individuals with aphasia. Aphasiology, 24(2), 188-209.
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of memory and language, 33(2), 149-174.
Keywords:
bilingual aphasia,
Codeswitching,
proficiency,
Cognition,
language control
Conference:
Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018.
Presentation Type:
poster presentation
Topic:
not eligible for a student prize
Citation:
Gray
TJ,
Navarro
J,
Fragoso
N and
Conner
O
(2019). Codeswitching in Bilingual Aphasia.
Conference Abstract:
Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00100
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Received:
01 May 2018;
Published Online:
22 Jan 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Teresa J Gray, San Francisco State University, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Science, San Francisco, CA, 94116, United States, teresag@sfsu.edu