Semantic-category processing in bilingual individuals with aphasia

Sammanfattning: Anomia or word retrieval difficulties are the most commonly observed symptoms in individuals with aphasia and often severely affect the communication abilities in their every day life. There are reports of word retrieval difficulties demarcated to different domains or categories. The most frequently reported form is that of deficits affecting the ability to name objects in the living domain as opposed to the nonliving. However, research regarding semantic-category processing has so far focused on monolingual individual, as language organization may differ in bilingual individuals. In order to advance the treatment of these symptoms, semantically guided treatment methods for category-specific deficits need to be designed. The aim of this study is to give a foundation for further research towards understanding the semantic-category organization and processing of bilingual individuals with stroke-induced aphasia. Three bilingual individuals with aphasia have been tested with an extensive neuropsychological test battery. The tests are designed for comparison between different semantic categories and feature cues such as living versus nonliving, animate versus inanimate, and perceptual versus functional. All participants showed subtle patterns in their abilities to process living and nonliving objects, with one having a more intact ability of processing living than nonliving objects, whereas the other two participants had a more intact ability in naming nonliving objects. The latter two also displayed the expected correspondent difficulty in processing perceptual more than functional information types. The participant with a favor in processing living objects did not perform any different on perceptual than functional cues. These results indicate that semantic-category processing theories regarding monolingual speakers also seem to hold true for bilingual speakers.