Conner Peggy S, Goral Mira, Anema Inge, Borodkin Katy, Haendler Yair, Knoph Monica, Mustelier Carmen, Paluska Elizabeth, Melnikova Yana, Moeyaert Mariola
a Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences , Lehman College of the City University of New York , Bronx , New York , USA.
b Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences , Graduate Center of the City University of New York , New York , USA.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2018;32(8):739-757. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2018.1435723. Epub 2018 Feb 8.
Current findings from intervention in bilingual aphasia are inconclusive regarding the extent to which levels of language proficiency and degree of linguistic distance between treated and non-treated languages influence cross-language generalisation and changes in levels of language activation and inhibition following treatment. In this study, we enrolled a 65-year-old multilingual speaker with aphasia and administered treatment in his L1, Dutch. We assessed pre- and post-treatment performance for seven of his languages, five of high proficiency and two of lower proficiency. We asked whether treatment in L1 would generalise to his other languages or increase interference among them. Forty hours of treatment were completed over the course of five weeks. Each language was tested three times at pretreatment and at post-treatment. Testing included measures of narrative production, answering questions, picture description and question generation. Dependent measures examined language efficiency, defined as Correct Information Units (CIUs)/min, as well as language mixing, defined as proportion of code-mixed whole words. We found that our participant's improved efficiency in Dutch was mirrored by parallel improvement in the four languages of high proficiency: English, German, Italian and French. In contrast, in his languages of lower proficiency, Norwegian and Spanish, improved efficiency was limited. An increase in code-mixing was noted in Spanish, but not in Norwegian. We interpret the increased code-mixing in Spanish as indication of heightened inhibition following improvement in a language of close linguistic proximity, Italian. We conclude that an interaction of language proficiency and linguistic similarity affects cross-language generalisation following intervention in multilingual aphasia.
目前关于双语失语症干预的研究结果尚无定论，即治疗语言与未治疗语言之间的语言熟练程度和语言距离在多大程度上会影响跨语言泛化以及治疗后语言激活和抑制水平的变化。在本研究中，我们招募了一位65岁的多语失语症患者，并使用他的第一语言荷兰语进行治疗。我们评估了他七种语言治疗前后的表现，其中五种语言熟练程度高，两种语言熟练程度低。我们询问在第一语言中的治疗是否会推广到他的其他语言，或者是否会增加这些语言之间的干扰。在五周的时间里完成了40小时的治疗。每种语言在治疗前和治疗后都进行了三次测试。测试包括叙事产出、回答问题、图片描述和问题生成等测量。相关测量指标考察了语言效率（定义为每分钟正确信息单元数）以及语言混合（定义为语码混合的完整单词比例）。我们发现，我们的参与者在荷兰语中提高的效率在四种熟练程度高的语言（英语、德语、意大利语和法语）中也有类似的提高。相比之下，在他熟练程度较低的语言（挪威语和西班牙语）中，效率的提高是有限的。西班牙语中语码混合有所增加，但挪威语中没有。我们将西班牙语中语码混合的增加解释为，在语言距离较近的意大利语有所改善后，抑制作用增强的表现。我们得出结论，语言熟练程度和语言相似性的相互作用会影响多语失语症干预后的跨语言泛化。
