Which Language Declines More? Longitudinal versus Cross-sectional Decline of Picture Naming in Bilinguals with Alzheimer’s Disease

Ivanova, Iva; Salmon, David P.; Gollan, Tamar H.

doi:10.1017/s1355617714000228

Cited by 28 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(71 reference statements)

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“…Previously we proposed that the dominant language is more sensitive to subtle differences between patients and controls that emerge in early stages of AD possibly because AD impairs semantic processing (reviewed above; see also Butters et al, 1987; Monsch et al, 1994; Salmon, Butters, & Chan, 1999) and the dominant language has richer semantic representations (Gollan et al, 2010), or because AD produces a general retrieval deficit and the most difficult-to-retrieve words that bilinguals know belong to the dominant language (Ivanova et al, 2014). The semantic account is challenged by finding that bilinguals with AD produced more intrusion errors than controls.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This pattern was apparent in the initial stages of disease progression in bilinguals who had one clearly more proficient language (Ivanova, Salmon, & Gollan, 2014; Kowoll, Degen, Gladdis, & Schröder, 2015), whereas balanced bilinguals exhibited parallel decline of both languages (Costa et al, 2012; Salvatierra, Rosselli, Acevedo, & Duara, 2007). This finding was counterintuitive because naming deficits are usually more pronounced for low-frequency than high-frequency words (Hodges, et al, 1992; Kirshner, Webb, & Kelly, 1984; Ober & Shenaut, 1988; Thomspon-Schill, Gabrieli, & Fleischman, 1999) and bilinguals generally speak their non-dominant language less frequently than their dominant language.…”

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confidence: 94%

“…Thus, if patients with AD have a deficit in effortful retrieval it may be most apparent compared to controls for these low frequency words that are only known in the dominant language. Neither patients nor controls are likely to know very low frequency words in the non-dominant language, so the retrieval deficit will initially not be as apparent in the non-dominant language (Ivanova et al, 2014). From this viewpoint, any task that elicits production of very low frequency words should expose greater differences between patients and controls in the dominant than in the non-dominant language.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Bilingual language intrusions and other speech errors in Alzheimer’s disease

Gollan

Stasenko

et al. 2017

Brain and Cognition

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The current study investigated how Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects production of speech errors in reading-aloud. Twelve Spanish-English bilinguals with AD and 19 matched controls read-aloud 8 paragraphs in four conditions (a) English-only, (b) Spanish-only, (c) English-mixed (mostly English with 6 Spanish words), and (d) Spanish-mixed (mostly Spanish with 6 English words). Reading elicited language intrusions (e.g., saying la instead of the), and several types of within-language errors (e.g., saying their instead of the). Patients produced more intrusions (and self-corrected less often) than controls, particularly when reading non-dominant language paragraphs with switches into the dominant language. Patients also produced more within-language errors than controls, but differences between groups for these were not consistently larger with dominant versus non-dominant language targets. These results illustrate the potential utility of speech errors for diagnosis of AD, suggest a variety of linguistic and executive control impairments in AD, and reveal multiple cognitive mechanisms needed to mix languages fluently. The observed pattern of deficits, and unique sensitivity of intrusions to AD in bilinguals, suggests intact ability to select a default language with contextual support, to rapidly translate and switch languages in production of connected speech, but impaired ability to monitor language membership while regulating inhibitory control.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 94%

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confidence: 99%

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Bilingual language intrusions and other speech errors in Alzheimer’s disease

Gollan

Stasenko

et al. 2017

Brain and Cognition

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“…The authors suggest that these seemingly contradictory results show that both languages are affected by AD, but decline in a different way depending on the stage of the disease's progression, with the dominant language being affected first, because it contains the most complex and weakly represented words (Ivanova, Salmon, & Gollan, 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

Second language performances in elderly bilinguals and individuals with dementia: The role of L2 immersion

Nanchen

Abutalebi²,

Assal³

et al. 2017

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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With the population aging and an increase in the number of senior immigrant citizens in modern societies, public health systems will be increasingly burdened with the need to deal with the care and treatment of bi-or multilingual individuals with cognitive decline and dementia. This raises complex questions such as which language is better preserved in these elderly individuals, particularly for those facing dementias. The main aim of the present investigation was to study in two groups of immigrant populations whether the first language (L1) or the second language (L2) are better preserved. For this purpose, we assessed by means of cognitive and neurolinguistics testing 20 late-bilingual individuals with neurodegenerative dementia of the Alzheimer and mixed type, and compared their results to a matched control group consisting of 19 subjects. Our results suggest that L1 is not better preserved in individuals with dementia. We report a parallel decline of second language across groups, regardless of the presence of dementia, as well as a significant correlation between language immersion and L2 relative performances (r ¼ 0.379, p ¼ 0.03). Moreover our data suggest that individual with dementia may have a relative sparing of syntactic L2 comprehension. These results suggest that these elderly individuals who have lived in a host country for many years, such as the subjects here investigated, may preserve similarly their L2 as much as their L1, irrespectively of the presence or absence of neurodegenerative disease, and even preserve some features of L2 processes in dementia. These results emphasize the role of immersion in language preservation.

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“…Based on caregivers' reports, they concluded that the non-dominant language was more affected than the dominant language. Ivanova et al (2014) found different longitudinal and cross-sectional patterns of decline. The non-dominant language declined more than the dominant language, but differences between patients and controls were greater for the dominant than for the non-dominant language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Bilingualism in a Case of the Non-fluent/agrammatic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia

2018

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There is a growing body of research on language impairment in bilingual speakers with neurodegenerative diseases. Evidence as to which language is better preserved is rather inconclusive. Various factors seem to influence language performance, most notably age of acquisition, level of proficiency, immersion and degree of exposure to each language. The present study examined fluency, lexical, discourse and grammatical abilities of a Greek-French late bilingual man with the non-fluent/agrammatic variant of primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA). Speech samples derived from three different narrative tasks in both languages were analyzed using quantitative production analysis (QPA) and fluency measures. The first aim of the study was to compare the participant's connected speech production to that of Greek-speaking normal controls. The second aim was to determine whether Greek (L1) and French (L2) were differentially impaired. To our knowledge, this is the first report of connected speech deficits in a Greek-speaking patient with PPA and the first study which uses QPA to compare L1 and L2 narratives in a bilingual speaker with PPA. Compared to neurologically healthy controls, our participant was impaired in lexical, discourse and grammatical productivity measures, but did not differ in measures of grammatical accuracy. The presence of dysfluencies, reduced speech rate and simplified syntax is consistent with the pattern of impairment reported for the nfvPPA. Results showed that narrative production measures did not differ significantly between languages. However, they suggest a slightly worse performance in his second, non-dominant, language despite a similar pattern of impairment in both languages. Lengthy exposure to L2 and regular activation of L2 through daily use may explain the preservation of discourse abilities in his non-dominant language. This study calls attention to factors such as language dominance, proficiency, patterns of use, and exposure to a language. These factors play a key role in assessing bilingual individuals with PPA and making clinical decisions.

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Which Language Declines More? Longitudinal versus Cross-sectional Decline of Picture Naming in Bilinguals with Alzheimer’s Disease

Cited by 28 publications

References 43 publications

Bilingual language intrusions and other speech errors in Alzheimer’s disease

Bilingual language intrusions and other speech errors in Alzheimer’s disease

Second language performances in elderly bilinguals and individuals with dementia: The role of L2 immersion

Bilingualism in a Case of the Non-fluent/agrammatic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia

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