Differential recovery in naming in bilingual aphasics

Language performance in a sample of 30 Catalan-Spanish bilingual aphasics was studied using three nominal tasks (naming, pointing, and translation). We compared performance between the two languages before and after therapy and also compared the improvements made in each language. Therapy was carried out in only one language, namely Catalan. Significant differences between the two languages were initially seen in the naming and translation tasks while after treatment significant differences were observed in the naming and pointing tasks. Analysis of covariance was carried out to control the influence of the initial performance on improvements. Performance in the naming task improved more in the treated language (Catalan) than in the nontreated language. We conclude that both differential impairment and recovery of languages in bilingual aphasics is seen not only in rare cases but also in studies of larger samples.