Cognate Effects in Bengali-English Bilingual Aphasia
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1
University of Reading, Psychology and clinical language sciences, United Kingdom
Introduction: Cognate advantage, that is, shorter reaction times and higher accuracy for cognate words (words with similar meaning and forms) over noncognate words (words with similar meaning but different forms) is a well-documented observation across various language combinations in both healthy and impaired populations (Lalor & Kirsner, 2001; Sheng, Lam, Cruz, & Fulton, 2016; Verreyt, Letter, Hemelsoet, Santens, & Duyck, 2013). Language proficiency in healthy bilingual adults has been shown to attribute to this effect. Healthy Catalan-Spanish bilinguals showed greater cognate facilitation in their non-dominant Spanish language than their dominant Catalan (Costa, Santesteban, & Caño, 2000). Many studies exploring the cognate effects have used language combinations that are similar to one another (e.g., Italian-English) as opposed to languages which are structurally different (e.g., Bengali-English). Bengali and English differs from each other at both lexical and syntactical levels. Though the interaction of linguistic systems in bilingual population have been extensively studied at the level of word meaning (Francis, 1999), it is less explored at the level of word form (cognate vs. noncognate) especially in bilingual aphasia population. In a picture naming task, this research explored the effects of cognate vs. noncognate word production in four Bengali-English individuals with aphasia to determine if cognate facilitation could be seen in structurally different languages.
Participants: Participants were four Bengali-English bilingual individuals with non-fluent aphasia following unilateral left cerebrovascular accident (see Table 1). Pre-morbidly, all participants use predominantly Bengali at home and at work; post-morbid language dominance reflected their pre-morbid usage. All participants were professionally educated and used English extensively for verbal and written communications at work.
Stimuli and Procedure: Stimuli consisted of 38 cognate (e.g., /bʌtən/ in English and /bɔtʌm/ in Bengali) and 38 noncognate (e.g., /haʊs/ in English and /bʌri/ in Bengali) nouns depicted by black-and-white line drawings. The words were matched for syllable length and subjective familiarity across word types and languages. Picture naming responses were elicited both in English and Bengali on different days. Accuracy of naming responses across word types and languages were calculated to determine the facilitation effects.
Results & Discussion: Table 1 presents the naming accuracy (raw score and % correct) for both languages’ cognate and noncognate words. Chi-square tests revealed no significant cognate facilitation effects for either language at group level (English χ2(1) = 0.15, p = .70; Bengali χ2(1) = 2.14, p = 0.14). However, one participant (KS) showed a trend towards cognate facilitation for only Bengali (χ2 (1) = 3.43, p = 0.06). Importantly, KS had the poorest naming accuracy amongst the four participants and had self-reported English as his dominant language both pre- and post-morbidly. Based on these preliminary results we conclude that cognate facilitation effects were not observed for the accuracy data for our Bengali-English participants. This lack of facilitation could be attributed to high accuracy levels for many of the participants and/or to the dissimilarities between Bengali and English. Further analysis of reaction time data would be informative to ascertain the presence or absence of cognate effects for these two languages.
References
References
Costa, A., Santesteban, M., & Caño, A. (2005). On the facilitatory effects of cognate words in bilingual speech production. Brain and Language, 94, 94-103.
Francis, W. (1999). Cognitive integration of language and memory in bilinguals: Semantic representation. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 193–222.
Lalor, E., & Kirsner, K. (2001). The role of cognates in bilingual aphasia: Implications for assessment and treatment. Aphasiology, 15, 1047–1056.
Sheng, L., Lam, B. P. W., Cruz, D., & Fulton, A. (2016). A robust demonstration of the cognate facilitation effect in first-language and second-language naming. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 229-238.
Verreyt, N., De Letter, M., Hemelsoet, D., Santens, P., & Duyck, W. (2013). Cognate effects and executive control in a patient with differential bilingual aphasia. Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, 20, 221-230.
Keywords:
Cognate,
bilingualism,
bilingual aphasia,
bengali-english,
Nonfluent aphasia,
Aphasia
Conference:
54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting, Llandudno, United Kingdom, 16 Oct - 18 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Poster Sessions
Topic:
Student Submissions
Citation:
Patra
A and
Bose
A
(2016). Cognate Effects in Bengali-English Bilingual Aphasia.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00107
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Received:
30 Apr 2016;
Published Online:
15 Aug 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Abhijeet Patra, University of Reading, Psychology and clinical language sciences, Reading, United Kingdom, a.patra@pgr.reading.ac.uk