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Bilingual Aphasia with Parallel Recovery Essay

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Bilingualism has been commonly used in scientific and common nomenclature to refer to the knowledge and/or use of two languages, though the specifics of the definition have been widely debated (e.g. Altarriba & Heredia, 2008; De Groot & Kroll, 1997; Grosjean, 2010). In fact, one half (Grosjean, 2010) to two-thirds (Walraff, 2000) of all people in the world have been estimated to routinely use more than one language in everyday communicative contexts. Given this global linguistic profile, it has been suggested that an increasing number of people with communication difficulties post-brain injury are likely to be bilingual (Ansaldo, Marchotte, Scherer, & Raboyeau, 2008; Centeno, 2009). Bilingual aphasia refers to difficulties in …show more content…

The cognitive control of language selection became particularly relevant as scientists began to explore the neurolinguistic underpinnings of language recovery in individuals with bilingual aphasia.
Individuals with bilingual aphasia regaining language abilities post-brain injury have been observed to exhibit several different patterns of recovery. Bilingual persons with aphasia (PWA) often demonstrate impairments in both their languages, which may or may not be consistent with their pre-stroke language dominance (Fabbro, 1999, 2000, 2001; Paradis, 1995, 1998, 2001). Paradis (2001) reviewed published reports of bilingual PWA and found that a majority of them (61%) demonstrated equal recovery of language abilities in both languages, analogous to their proficiency prior to brain injury (parallel recovery). In the other participants, language recovery post-stroke was marked by better recovery in one language compared to the other (differential recovery; 18%), inappropriate mixing of the two languages (blended recovery; 9%), recovery of one language only (selective recovery; 7%) or recovery of one language after another (successive recovery; 5%). Fabbro (2001) evaluated the recovery profiles of 20 right-handed, high-proficiency bilingual PWA and also found a predominance of parallel recovery (65%) followed by differential recovery (35%). But despite the higher prevalence of parallel recovery, relatively

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