Helping Bilingual People with Aphasia to Find the Words

What is it about?

Aphasia is a language disorder, often caused by stroke, that can make it difficult to find and produce words. For people who speak more than one language, these difficulties can affect both languages, making rehabilitation more complex. Our study examines Bilingual Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (BAbSANT), which is a word-retrieval treatment adapted to different languages and cultures. BAbSANT focuses on practicing abstract words, like justice, and their connections to other words. We analyzed treatment data from 15 bilingual individuals with aphasia across six language combinations. The findings showed improvements in retrieving trained words and, importantly, benefits extending to the language that was not directly treated. In this project, we also investigated how a person's language dominance (which language is stronger) influences treatment outcomes.

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Why is it important?

Despite the large number of bilingual and multilingual speakers worldwide, aphasia treatment research has historically focused mainly on English speakers. There is a critical need for effective treatments that account for linguistic and cultural differences. By bringing together data collected across multiple studies and language combinations, this research provides evidence supporting BAbSANT therapy as a promising treatment for bilingual people with aphasia. Importantly, the findings demonstrate that improvements can extend beyond directly trained words in the trained language and even transfer to another language. Our study also highlights how language dominance can influence treatment outcomes, a finding that provides insights for developing more individualized rehabilitation approaches for patients. These findings have important implications for researchers and speech-language pathologists who are working toward more inclusive and effective aphasia care.

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