A theoretical account of lexical and semantic naming deficits in bilingual aphasia

The purpose of this study was to examine premorbid language proficiency and lexical and semantic processing deficits in bilingual aphasia and develop a theoretical account of bilingual language processing.

Nineteen Spanish-English patients with bilingual aphasia completed a language use questionnaire (LUQ) and were administered Spanish and English standardized language assessments. The authors analyzed the data to (a) identify patterns of lexical and semantic processing deficits and conceptualize a theoretical framework that accounts for language deficits, (b) determine LUQ measures that predict poststroke language deficits, and (c) evaluate the relationship between predictive LUQ measures and poststroke language deficits in order to identify impairment patterns.

On the basis of the results, the authors obtained significant correlations on several measures between language input and output. They identified prestroke language ability rating as the strongest predictor of poststroke outcomes. On the basis of these data, 2 distinct groups were identified: (a) patients who lost the same amount of language in Spanish and English and (b) patients who lost different amounts of Spanish and English.

These findings suggest that it is possible to identify relationships between language patterns and deficits in patients with bilingual aphasia and that these trends will be instrumental in clinical assessments of this understudied population.