Exploring Language Impairment in Catalan-Dominant Bilinguals with Primary Progressive Aphasia: Preliminary Data

Research on primary progressive aphasia (PPA) in minority languages and bilingual speakers remains limited, which can compromise accurate diagnosis and intervention. This is the case for Catalan, which lacks standardized tools for this population.

This study aimed to evaluate the Catalan version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT) for detecting and characterizing PPA in Catalan-dominant bilingual individuals.

We administered the CAT-CAT to four participants clinically diagnosed with PPA.

The test detected participants' core linguistic impairments, such as anomia, and revealed distinct severity profiles consistent with PPA variant types. Moreover, it captured deficits that were not identified by routine clinical observation or informal assessment.

This study provides the first detailed characterization of PPA in Catalan-speaking individuals and, although based on a small sample, its findings address a critical gap in neurodegenerative language research and highlight the importance of standardized tools to improve diagnosis and guide clinical interventions in bilingual speakers of minority languages.