Semantic feature analysis treatment in Spanish–English and French–English bilingual aphasia

Abstract

Background: Edmonds and Kiran (2006 Edmonds, L. and Kiran, S. 2006. Effect of semantic based treatment on cross linguistic generalisation in bilingual aphasia.. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 49: 729–748. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reported that training lexical retrieval in one language resulted in within‐language and cross‐language generalisation in three bilingual (English–Spanish) patients with aphasia. Aims: The present experiment continues this line of research, repeating a similar procedure with new patients and examining a broader range of factors that may affect generalisation patterns. Methods & Procedures: Four participants (two Spanish–English and two French–English speakers) with anomia post CVA received a semantic feature‐based treatment aimed at improving naming of English or Spanish/French nouns. Using a multiple baseline design, generalisation to untrained semantically related and unrelated items in each language was measured during periods of therapy first in one language, then in the other. Outcomes & Results: All patients improved their naming of the trained items in the trained language, although to varying degrees. Within‐language generalisation to semantically related items occurred in two Spanish–English patients and one French–English patient. Cross‐language generalisation to translations and semantically related items occurred only for one French–English patient. Conclusions: The impact of the intervention is very clear. The semantic feature‐based practice is linked to the gains made, and accounts for the predominance of semantic naming errors after treatment. Possible explanations for the different patterns of generalisation are considered in terms of the various factors including each patient's pre‐stroke language proficiency, age of acquisition of each language, post‐stroke level of language impairment, and type and severity of aphasia.