Presentation

Katelyn Dinsmore¹, Emily Lundeen¹, Chaleece W. Sandberg¹, Teresa Gray²; ¹Penn State University, ²San Francisco State University

A number of studies have found an advantage in cognitive control in bilingual adults compared to monolingual adults (see van den Noort et al., 2019 for a review). Cognitive reserve in bilingualism has also been well-researched (Grant et al., 2014). However, the potential benefits of bilingualism for language function after stroke has received less attention. Limited research indicates that bilingual persons with aphasia (PWA) are more efficient at inhibiting irrelevant nonverbal (Dekhtyar et al., 2020) and verbal (Faroqi-Shah et al., 2018) information compared to monolingual PWA. However, no study has examined both nonverbal and verbal cognitive control across mono- and bi-lingual adults with and without aphasia. Thus, we aimed to replicate and extend previous findings of a bilingual advantage in neurologically intact older adults (NIOA) and PWA for both verbal and nonverbal tasks. Data are collected for ten English monolingual NIOA, 6 Spanish-English bilingual NIOA, 9 English monolingual PWA and 4 Spanish-English bilingual PWA, who each completed both a nonverbal and verbal flanker task. We expect ten participants in each group. BNIOA and BPWA completed the verbal flanker task in both Spanish and English. The congruency effect (CE) is an indicator of cognitive control (i.e., the ability to suppress distractors) and was calculated as the difference in reaction time (RT) between congruent and incongruent trials. Additionally, based on Grundy et al. (2017), the sequential congruency effect (SCE), which measures the influence of the previous trial on the current trial, was examined. Four trial types were created: congruent trials following a congruent trial (cC), congruent trials following an incongruent trial (iC), incongruent trials following a congruent trial (cI), and incongruent trials following an incongruent trial (iI). The SCE was calculated by subtracting the c-flanker effect (the I-C difference following congruent trials) from the i-flanker effect (the I-C difference following incongruent trials). Smaller SCEs indicate increased ability to disengage attention from the previous trial. Preliminary univariate 2 (bilingual vs. monolingual) x 2 (aphasia vs. intact) x 2 (verbal vs. nonverbal) ANOVAs of RT (Sidak alpha-level: p<.05) were conducted for both CE and SCE. For CE, there was a main effect of task type, with smaller CEs in the verbal task. There was also an interaction between task type and presence of aphasia, with smaller CEs for NIOA than PWA in the nonverbal task. For SCE, there was a main effect of bilingualism, with smaller SCEs for bilingual than monolingual individuals, and a main effect of aphasia, with smaller SCEs for PWA than NIOA. There was also an interaction between aphasia and task which suggested that the verbal task was driving the difference between PWA and NIOA and showed that PWA have smaller SCEs for the verbal than nonverbal task. These preliminary results confirm the bilingual advantage for disengaging attention (more bilingual participants will clarify this result) and reveal better control for the verbal than nonverbal task. The unexpected juxtaposition of decreased control in the nonverbal task with increased ability to disengage attention in the verbal task accompanying aphasia is worth exploring further.

Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Disorders: Acquired