Aphasia therapy in the age of globalization: cross-linguistic therapy effects in bilingual aphasia.
BACKGROUND
Globalization imposes challenges to the field of behavioural neurology, among which is an increase in the prevalence of bilingual aphasia. Thus, aphasiologists have increasingly focused on bilingual aphasia therapy and, more recently, on the identification of the most efficient procedures for triggering language recovery in bilinguals with aphasia. Therapy in both languages is often not available, and, thus, researchers have focused on the transfer of therapy effects from the treated language to the untreated one.


OBJECTIVE
This paper discusses the literature on bilingual aphasia therapy, with a focus on cross-linguistic therapy effects from the language in which therapy is provided to the untreated language.


METHODS
Fifteen articles including two systematic reviews, providing details on pre- and posttherapy in the adult bilingual population with poststroke aphasia and anomia are discussed with regard to variables that can influence the presence or absence of cross-linguistic transfer of therapy effects.


CONCLUSIONS
. The potential for CLT of therapy effects from the treated to the untreated language depends on the word type, the degree of structural overlap between languages, the type of therapy approach, the pre- and postmorbid language proficiency profiles, and the status of the cognitive control circuit.
Centre de Recherché de l'Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, 4565 Queen Mary Road, Montréal, QC, Canada H3W 1W5 ; Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Pavillon 7077 Avenue du Parc, local 3001-1, Montréal, QC, Canada H3N 1X7.
Ana Inés
AI
Ansaldo
Centre de Recherché de l'Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, 4565 Queen Mary Road, Montréal, QC, Canada H3W 1W5.
Ladan Ghazi
LG
Saidi
D001037:Aphasia / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D007802:Language; D019303:Multilingualism