Abstract:
INTRODUCTION : The aim of this study is contribute to clinical practice of bilinguals around the
globe, as well as to add to our understanding of bilingual aphasia processing, by analysing
confrontation naming data from four Afrikaans/English bilingual individuals with acquired
aphasia due to a left hemisphere stroke.
METHODS : This is a case series analysis of four Afrikaans/English bilingual aphasic individuals
following a left cerebrovascular accident. Error analysis of confrontation naming data in both
languages was performed. Research questions were directed toward the between language
differences in lexical retrieval abilities, types of errors produced and degree of cognate overlap.
RESULTS : Three of the four participants showed significantly higher naming accuracy in
first acquired language (L1) relative to the second acquired language (L2) and the largest
proportion of error type for those three participants in both L1 and L2 was omission. One of the
four participants (linguistically balanced) showed no between language accuracy difference.
Regarding cognate overlap, there was a trend for higher accuracy for higher cognate words
(compared to low).
DISCUSSION : This study showed that naming performance in these four individuals was
reflective of their relative language proficiency and use patterns prior to their stroke. These
findings are consistent with the hierarchical model, in normal bilingual speakers and with
persons with bilingual aphasia.
