Verbal fluency as a measure of lexical access and cognitive control in bilingual persons with aphasia.
Erin Carpenter, Leela Rao, Claudia Peñaloza and 1 others
PMID 34366537WHAT IT FOUND
Bilingual people with aphasia performed as well as healthy controls when allowed to switch languages freely.
However, they struggled significantly more than controls when forced to switch languages for every word. This suggests that rigid language constraints increase cognitive load and hinder word retrieval.
Key findings
01Bilingual people with aphasia (BPWA) performed comparably to healthy bilinguals in the Self-Switch condition, where they could choose which language to use for each word.
02BPWA produced a significantly lower proportion of accurate words than healthy bilinguals in the Forced-Switch condition, where they had to alternate languages for every item.
03Both groups used direct translations more frequently in the Forced-Switch condition than in the Self-Switch condition, likely as a strategy to manage increased cognitive control demands.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small, particularly for the aphasia group (n=13). The study did not measure language dominance, only first- and second-acquired language. The Language Use Questionnaire did not capture the frequency of real-life code-switching or interaction in specific language contexts. The groups differed slightly in age and education, though these were controlled for in some analyses.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that bilingual people with aphasia have intact lexical access simply because they performed well on the Self-Switch task. Their overall accuracy was lower than healthy controls in most conditions, and the study design highlights a specific interaction between cognitive control demands and language constraints, not a general preservation of language ability.