Bilingual aphasia : efficacy and generalization of bilingual therapy

The present study was conducted in order to investigate the effects of bilingual therapy on the naming skills of a bilingual aphasic patient. The nature of the word-finding difficulties of a French-English bilingual aphasic subject was assessed. Theory-based anomia therapy was administered to the patient first in English and then in French to explore within- and across-language treatment effects. General language skills were also assessed before and after therapy. Results revealed significant improvement in naming of treated words, but very limited generalization to untreated items in only one of the languages. Transfer of therapy effects from treated to untreated language was not observed. Findings are discussed in relation to the efficacy of bilingual therapy; implications for models of bilingual lexical organization are considered