Effect of Treatment for Bilingual Individuals With Aphasia: A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Journal of Neurolinguistics

Faroqi-Shah, Y., Frymark, T., et al. (2010).

Journal of Neurolinguistics, 23(4), 319-341.

This systematic review investigates the effects of providing treatment in the primary language (L1) or secondary language (L2) on receptive and expressive language skills in bilingual individuals with neurologically-induced aphasia.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association



From 1980 to August 2009

Peer-reviewed, original studies

13

Modest evidence from exploratory studies suggests that aphasia treatment provided in the secondary language (L2) yields positive results. Bilingual individuals with aphasia receiving unilingual services in L2 demonstrated improved receptive and expressive language outcomes. Mixed results were found for cross-linguistic transfer to untreated language.

No studies were found investigating the effect of a language broker on the treatment of individuals with aphasia.