Whitaker Studies in Neurolinguistics

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4832-6541-4
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

Studies in Neurolinguistics, Volume 3 presents detailed case histories, multi-subject experimental studies, literature reviews, and research papers that employ a variety of experimental and observational techniques. This volume contains seven chapters that focus on a wide range of research in the field of neurolinguistics. Chapter 1 discusses the various approaches to the problem of auditory comprehension in aphasia. A survey of the world's literature on bilingualism and aphasia is provided in chapter 2. The third chapter examines the different models and explanations for conduction aphasia. Chapter 4 provides a synthesis of the anatomic, physiologic, and behavioral research on the role of the limbic system in human communication. Chapter 5 presents a model of individual differences in hemispheric functioning, in which a number of theories about the left and right hemispheres are analyzed and compared. Chapter 6 shows how different levels of language are revealed. The last chapter addresses 'The Question of Electrophysiological Asymmetries Preceding Speech' in a study of the readiness potentials over the motor and premotor regions in eight subjects. Linguists, psychologists, and neurologists will find the book highly informative.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Whitaker, Haiganoosh

Whitaker, Harry A

Leseproben

2

Bilingualism and Aphasia

Michel Paradis,     McGILL UNIVERSITY

Publisher Summary

This chapter focuses on aphasia and bilingualism. Recovery is said to be antagonistic when one language regresses as the other progresses. Recovery is said to be successive when one language does not begin to reappear until another has been restored. Successive recovery may also be a part of a selective restitution pattern. The chapter presents a case study of a patient who first recovered from his Bulgarian mother tongue and then from German and Russian, but recovered from neither French nor English. Recovery is said to be selective when the patient does not regain one or more of his languages. It has also been observed that sometimes the language preferentially recovered is neither the mother tongue nor the most fluent language but the language of the patient’s milieu, that is, the language spoken by the hospital staff. However, no single characteristic of the language preferentially restituted seems to be the determining factor of its recovery.

MODES OF RESTITUTION

In surveying the world literature on aphasia in polyglots, one is struck by the diversity of the modes of restitution of the patients’ various languages. At least five basic patterns are encountered: synergistic, antagonistic, successive, mixed or selective.

Recovery is said to be synergistic when progress in one language is accompanied by progress in another. It is parallel when the languages are similarly impaired and restored at the same rate, and differential when impairment is of a different degree in each language and restitution occurs at the same or at a different rate (See Figure 2.1).1

Figure 2.1 Synergistic recovery.

Parallel recovery, which is what Pitres (1895) thought one ought to expect, seems indeed to be the more common (See Milner, 1964, p. 118; Brain, 1965, p. 118). Studies of 10 consecutive and unselected cases seen at the Neurological Institute of New York over a 3-month period by Charlton (1964) and of 33 randomly selected dysphasic patients observed by Nair and Virmani (1973) in India report that an average of about 90%of cases exhibited equal impairment with simultaneous restitution of all the languages that were familiar to the patients prior to insult. On the other hand, as Pitres also noted (p. 877), many examples of differential recovery can be found. It was to account for such exceptions that Pitres formulated a few concluding remarks that soon came to be known as . Thus it is inaccurate to speak of a case as “contradicting” or, worse, “disproving” , as some authors have done (L’Hermitte, Hécaen, Dubois, Culioli, Tabouret-Keller, 1966, pp. 315, 328), when the kinds of impairment are identical in all languages spoken by the patient and the recovery of these languages is parallel.

Of 138 cases reported in the literature and surveyed in the present study, 67 were found to follow a synergistic pattern of recovery, of which 56 were parallel and 11 differential. These numbers are not to be taken as representing valid ratios in an unselected population, since most of the published case reports are “interesting” rather than “typical,” as pointed out by Charlton (1964). They are useful, nevertheless, in showing that the atypical cases do occur. Table 2.1 lists these cases and indicates type of aphasia and type and rate of recovery in languages spoken by each.

TABLE 2.1

Correlation of Patterns o f Recovery with Characteristics of Language Recovered

Note: The question of the respective influences upon recovery of the mother tongue, the most fluent language at the time of insult, or the language of the environment not only was mentioned by Lambert and Fillenbaum (1959) but was discussed by eminent aphasiologists at the 1964 Ciba Symposium. Participants seemed to adhere to one or another of the following rules: the best preserved language is the one most needed, and the patient is likely to recover the language of the environment (Bay, 1964); the language first learned returns first (Ross, 1964); the language most practiced is retained best, irrespective of whether it was acquired first or last (Critchley, 1964); or disorganization is similar in every language that a patient was originally able to speak fluently (Hécaen, 1964). Because this question remains open and continues to be considered extremely important, this table includes data as described in the next three paragraphs.

The language the subject acquired first. When two languages are learned simultaneously, the question of whether the mother tongue was recovered first (F) or last (L), best (B) or worst (W), is not appropriate since either of the languages recovered is a mother tongue.

The language that the patient spoke most fluently at the time of insult. This could be either the mother tongue or a language acquired later. In the case of a balanced bilingual, one who speaks both languages with equal fluency, this criterion does not apply.

The language spoken in the community in which the patient lived prior to insult and to which he or she is exposed during convalescence (i.e., the language of the hospital staff). This language may be the same as, or different from, both the patient’s mother tongue and his or her most fluent language. When the hospital staff is bilingual or when all of the patient’s languages–including that of the surroundings–are recovered in a parallel fashion, the question of whether the language of the surroundings was recovered first or last, best or worst, becomes irrelevant.

The , and modes of restitution are defined in the introduction to this chapter.

, or symptoms, as described by various authors, are as follows: A. amnestic; B. word blindness; C. central; D. word deafness; E. echolalia; G. agraphia; L. conduction (); M. motor (Broca, expressive); N. nominal; P. paraphasia; R. perseveration; S. sensory (Wernicke, receptive); T. anarthria; W. word finding difficulties; X. alexia;?. not mentioned, cannot be conclusively ascertained. A comma separating types of aphasia indicates a sequence in time.

“Motor” (M) and “Sensory” (S) are to be interpreted in the broadest possible sense. Some authors refer specifically to their patients as Broca or Wernicke aphasics, others speak of expressive or receptive aphasia. The syndromes covered by a particular label may vary over time: What one author calls, for example, is not necessarily what another author means to indicate when he uses that term; similarly, not everyone is clear on what is meant by conduction aphasia (see discussion in De Reuck and O’Connor, 1964, pp. 251–252). It is therefore very difficult to assign a type of aphasia to some of the cases.

The reader may feel justified in doubting the validity of the linguistic evidence put forward by some of the earlier reports when he reads, for instance, that a patient was puzzled and did not seem to understand such simple questions as “Who are you born [sic]?” This is no misprint or slip of the pen; the same sentence is found on two separate occasions (Pitres, 1895, pp. 892, 893). If the pronunciation of the examiner matched the grammar, many a nonaphasic might have been puzzled! Moreover, a number of “cases” discussed in the literature of those days are mere hearsay, often reported second or third hand (Bourdin, 1876; Scoresby-Jackson, 1867; Pitres, 1895). Nevertheless, some of these have been included in Table 2.1 because they have often been quoted and thus have become notorious. Some cases of polyglot reactions have been reported in which the patient was neither aphasic nor polyglot (Coppola, 1928)!

Recovery is said to be antagonistic when one language regresses as the other progresses (see Figure 2.2). Of the 138 cases reviewed here, 6 were found to follow such a pattern. For instance, when Minkowski’s (1933) patient began to speak, he could express himself more easily in French because he could not find his words in Swiss dialect (his mother tongue and most fluent language before his accident) or in standard German. This condition lasted for a few weeks, during which time, the patient gradually regained normal use of dialect and of standard German, while his French regressed at the same rate.

Figure 2.2 Antagonistic recovery.

Winterstein and Meier (1939) observed a Swiss-German female patient suffering from aphasia after a skull fracture. Upon recovery, she uttered her first words in Italian and spoke only this language for the first 4 or 5 days. Then she began to use French. With the improvement of her French, her Italian regressed and disappeared completely. As she began to regain German, two weeks after the accident, her French began to recede.

Shubert (1940) describes antagonistic recovery in a case of bilingual agraphia: The Georgian writing of the patient deteriorated...