Crossed aphasia in multilinguals.
Reports of crossed aphasia in single case studies of bilinguals have led to incidence studies of crossed aphasia among larger groups of stroke patients. Among a few others, studies carried out in India (K. R. Nair & Virmani, 1973 Indian Journal of Medical Research, 61, 9; P. Chary, 1986, In Language processing in bilinguals: Psycholinguistic and neuropsychological perspectives) have lent support to the notion of a higher incidence of crossed aphasia among bi- and multilinguals and form major citations in support of the hypothesis that bilingualism could lead to a greater bilateral cerebral representation of languages. This paper reports on the incidence of crossed aphasia in a large unselected population of stroke patients in monolingual and multilingual speakers of South India, which is in agreement with the previous reports of a higher incidence of crossed aphasia in multilinguals. However, along with this high incidence of crossed aphasia a low incidence of sinistrality was also seen. In order to confirm these findings and their significance two further studies were carried out-an incidence study of crossed aphasia in a population of mono- and multilingual aphasics and an incidence study of hand dominance in a normal population. The results and their significance to the issue of crossed aphasia in multilinguals are presented.
Karanth
P
P
Department of Speech Pathology, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore.
Rangamani
G N
GN
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001037:Aphasia / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002561:Cerebrovascular Disorders / Q000150:complications; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged