Executive control in bilingual aphasia: a systematic review

Abstract

Much research has been dedicated to the effects of bilingualism on executive control (EC). For bilinguals with aphasia, the interplay with EC is complex. In this systematic review, we synthesize research on this topic and provide an overview of the current state of the field. First, we examine the evidence for EC deficits in bilingual persons with aphasia (bPWA). We then discuss the domain generality of bilingual language control impairments. Finally, we evaluate the bilingual advantage hypothesis in bPWA. We conclude that (1) EC impairments in bPWA are frequently observed, (2) experimental results on the relationship between linguistic and domain-general control are mixed, (3) bPWA with language control problems in everyday communication have domain-general EC problems, and (4) there are indications for EC advantages in bPWA. We end with directions for experimental work that could provide better insight into the intricate relationship between EC and bilingual aphasia.

French Phonological Component Analysis and aphasia recovery: A bilingual perspective on behavioral and structural data

“…Although we do not observe any accuracy variation for these participants (both participants displayed a 0.00 error rate for the congruent condition and 0.01 for the incongruent condition), their Flanker effects were in typical ranges based on difference scores provided in previous literature ( Calabria et al, 2019 ). Interestingly, upon comparing the post-therapy accuracy scores, bPWA did show significantly better performances than mPWA, indicating better cognitive performance on the task, which is in line with previous studies ( Mooijman et al, 2021 ). Thus, the evidence supporting the transfer of gains to cognitive task performance following Fr-PCA therapy is based on the fact that all participants could successfully perform the task post-therapy compared to pre-therapy and either performed at an expected level or showed some level of improvement, either in terms of speed (MA1, MA3, BA3, BA4), accuracy (MA1) or reduced interference (MA1, MA3, BA3, BA4).…”

“…However, it is difficult to conclude that Fr-PCA is related to transfer in cognitive performance. Indeed, bPWA’s better performance than their monolingual peers at the Flanker task in this study (reported in Table 5 ) replicates results from previous literature ( Dash and Kar, 2014 ; Alladi et al, 2016 ; Paplikar et al, 2018 ; Dekhtyar et al, 2020 ; Lahiri et al, 2020 ; Penaloza et al, 2020 ; Mooijman et al, 2021 ). Therefore, it may also be possible that inhibition – a subcomponent of cognitive control examined by the Flanker task performance – may be a necessary pre-requisite for therapy gains and generalization ( Yeung and Law, 2010 ), a question which needs to be addressed in future studies.…”

“…To this day, there remains little consensus in the literature, much less in the bilingual literature, on the predictive value of variables such as lesion size, lesion location, and role of the RH. Recent studies on bilingual persons with aphasia (bPWA) report a bilingual advantage in cognitive performances in stroke survivors ( Dash and Kar, 2014 ; Alladi et al, 2016 ; Paplikar et al, 2018 ; Dekhtyar et al, 2020 ; Lahiri et al, 2020 ; Penaloza et al, 2020 ; Mooijman et al, 2021 ). Concerning aphasia symptom severity, bPWA have milder language deficits in their mother tongue ( Paplikar et al, 2018 ; Ardila and Lahiri, 2020 ).…”

Establishing reporting standards for participant characteristics in post-stroke aphasia research: An international e-Delphi exercise and consensus meeting

“…Bi/multilingualism is known to explain certain neurological differences 25 and is hypothesised to influence aphasia outcomes. 26 The evidence however diverges, some studies suggest a protective effect of bilingualism against severe aphasia, 27 while others report poorer language outcomes in bilingual stroke survivors. 28…”

Abstracts of the International Science of Aphasia Conference, University of Bordeaux, September 2022

“…The acquired knowledge from this field is drawn from small sample studies, using different methodologies and focusing on a variety of tasks (lexical decision, semantic judgment, linguistic flanker task, Stroop task, etc.). Despite the indication of cognitive control implication in bilingual aphasia deficits, this relationship still needs further investigation (Mooijman et al, 2021;Nair et al, 2021) by measuring different executive function skills (e.g., Murray, 2017) and assessing different aphasia profiles (e.g., Kuzmina & Weekes (2016)).…”