Oral reading in bilingual aphasia: Evidence from Mongolian and Chinese

Abstract

Cognitive neuropsychological studies of bilingual patients with aphasia have contributed to our understanding of how the brain processes different languages. The question we asked is whether differences in script have any impact on language processing in bilingual aphasic patients who speak languages with different writing systems: Chinese and Mongolian. We observed a pattern of greater impairment to written word comprehension and oral reading in L2 (Chinese) than in L1 (Mongolian) for two patients. We argue that differences in script have only a minimal effect on written word processing in bilingual aphasia when the age of acquisition, word frequency and imageability of lexical items is controlled. Our conclusion is that reading of familiar words in Mongolian and Chinese might not require independent cognitive systems or brain regions.

Acquired Dyslexia and Dysgraphia across Scripts

“…That is not to say that all cases of acquired dyslexia in bilingual speakers show the same pattern of oral reading impairment in both languages. Weekes et al [38] report Mongolian-Chinese bilingual speakers with different reading errors in two types of script. The Mongolian language has an alphabetic script with a set of sublexical mappings from orthography to phonology.…”

Using Neuroeducation as a Model to Evaluate the Effect of Imagery on Chinese Character Writing

“…Therefore, using pictures or physical images to increase students' semantic knowledge of the character, including the underlying meaning of character components and spatial configurations (Lam, 2016;Weekes, YIN, SU, & CHEN, 2006), has been considered a fundamental method in character learning (see GU, 2006;TAN, 1998;WANG & ZHENG, 2005). However, it is unknown whether and in what conditions physical images can be converted into students' mental images (referring only to visual images) aligned with character forms.…”

Hybrid Modeling of Intelligence and Linguistic Factors as Predictors of L2 Writing Quality: A SEM Approach

“…Understanding the cognitive processes involved in writing tasks while learning a second or foreign language seems necessary for tackling the problems observed in writing classrooms. Identifying, describing, and explaining the cognitive factors involved in L2 writing have captured scholars' attention from a range of disciplines such as neurolinguistics (Barnes, Dennis, & Hetherington, 2004;Paradis & Hildebrandt, 1985;Weekes, Yin, Su, & Chen, 2006), second language acquisition (Bialystok, 2002;Sandberg & Hjelmquist, 1996), teaching English as a foreign language (Escribano, 1999;Gupta & Woldermariam, 2011;Nakamaru, 2010), discourse analysis (Hyland, 2008), and narrative psychology (Bloome, Katz, & Champion, 2003). Expectedly, applied linguists can use the findings of cognitive sciences for solving the learners' problems in L2 writing.…”