Language mixing patterns in a bilingual individual with non-fluent aphasia

Abstract

Background: Language mixing in bilingual speakers with aphasia has been reported in a number of research studies, but the reasons for the mixing and whether it reflects typical or atypical behaviour has been a matter of debate. Aims: In this study we tested the hypothesis that language mixing behaviour in bilingual aphasia reflects lexical retrieval difficulty. Methods & procedures: We recruited a Hebrew-English bilingual participant with mild-moderate non-fluent agrammatic aphasia and assessed his languages at three timepoints. We analysed the participant’s Hebrew and English production for retrieval during single-word naming, sentences, and discourse, and identified all instances of language mixing. Outcomes & Results: We found that there was a greater frequency of language mixing during production of more difficult lexical items, namely the post-morbidly less proficient language (compared to the more proficient language), function words (compared to content words), and single-word naming (compared to retrieval in the context of connected speech tasks), but not for verbs (compared to nouns). Conclusions: In this bilingual participant with non-fluent aphasia, language mixing behaviour closely resembles lexical retrieval difficulty. Thus, we suggest that bilingual speakers with aphasia may mix their languages as a strategy to maximise communication.

Multilingualism across the Lifespan

“…With respect to Question 1, we see that some of the patterns of language-switching/mixing exhibited by PWA could be interpreted as reflecting a strategy of the participants to maximise communication, as they suffered from deficient linguistic abilities, such as word-retrieval problems (e.g. Aglioti et al 1996;Kong et al 2014;Lerman et al 2019). Importantly, however, there were also cases where this interpretation was not likely, as language-switching/mixing appeared to be unintentional and beyond the control of the participant.…”

“…Communication and Cognitive Impairments Lerman et al (2019) provided a more detailed analysis of a Hebrew-English bilingual participant reported in . This participant developed non-fluent aphasia following a stroke that resulted in an extensive fronto-parietal lesion in the left hemisphere.…”

“…alternation of English and Hebrew across utterances). Just like , Lerman et al (2019) argued that their bilingual participant used language-mixing as a strategy to maximise communication. The authors also reported that, although Hebrew and English were examined in monolingual contexts, the experimenters were Hebrew-English bilinguals.…”

“…However, some scholars use the term language-mixing to refer to both code-mixing and code-switching (e.g. Lerman et al 2019), while the term language-switching is typically used in psycholinguistic experiments, including single-word tasks (e.g. Meuter and Allport 1999;Declerck and Philipp 2015).…”

Predicting language treatment response in bilingual aphasia using neural network-based patient models

“…Experimental patients receive the model-prescribed optimal language of treatment while control patients receive therapy in the model non-prescribed language, and the goal is to validate BiLex predictions by contrasting simulated versus actual treatment outcomes in patients receiving therapy in the language defined as optimal by the model and patients receiving therapy in the language opposite to the model’s recommendation. Also, future versions of BiLex could incorporate additional parameters to account for other factors that may influence treatment outcomes in BWA, including lesion location 45 , deficits in cognitive control 53 , and patterns of language switching and mixing 6 , 54 , as well as therapy-related factors such as type of therapy, duration, and intensity 52 . Finally, inconsistencies in naming ability at the individual item level are common in aphasia and could play an important role in characterizing patterns of impairment and recovery.…”