Poster E40, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 3:45 – 5:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Phonological aspects of lexical retrieval in fluent bilingual aphasia
Marco Calabria1, Federica Iaia1, Nicholas Grunden1,2, Carmen García Sánchez2;1Center for Brain and Cognition, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, 2Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona
Introduction. In a previous study, we showed that lexical retrieval may be selectively impaired in bilinguals with aphasia when they need to resolve semantic competition in their non-dominant language. Additionally, our data suggested that this impairment could possibly be explained by an excessive amount of inhibition that makes target words less accessible during lexical retrieval. In this study, we further investigate the origin of the lexical retrieval deficits in bilingual patients with aphasia by focusing on the role of phonological competition. Participants and Methods. We explored the naming performance of bilinguals with fluent aphasia (n=8) and age-matched healthy controls (n=15) on a phonologically blocked cyclic naming task in both their languages. All participants were early bilinguals and high proficient in Catalan and Spanish with a balanced use of the two languages. During the task, participants were asked to name pictures in two conditions: a) homogenous, where picture names shared their initial syllable, and b) heterogeneous, where picture names began with different syllables. Results. Healthy controls showed a small but consistent effect of phonological facilitation, as indicated by shorter naming latencies when pictures were presented in the homogenous compared to heterogeneous condition. Conversely, bilingual patients exhibited an interference effect with longer naming latencies in homogenous versus heterogeneous conditions. Patients also showed phonological interference in naming accuracy to the same degree in both languages along with a similar distribution of error types across languages. Conclusions. Taken together, these results suggest that competitive processes of phonological encoding are language-independent in bilingual speech production. Also, the blocking effects on naming performance in patients are compatible with reduced inhibitory control over phonological competitors during lexical retrieval.
Themes: Multilingualism, Disorders: Acquired
Method: Behavioral