CROSSLINGUISTIC GENERALIZATION OF SEMANTIC TREATMENT IN APHASIA : EVIDENCE FROM THE INDIAN CONTEXT

Introduction The last two decades witnessed several novel treatment approaches to aphasia therapy. Semantic feature-based therapy is one of such treatment approaches that gained considerable research attention (Boyle & Coelho, 1995). More importantly, this treatment approach has been found effective in bilingual persons with aphasia. For instance, Edmonds and Kiran (2006) administered semantic feature based therapy in SpanishEnglish bilingual persons with aphasia and reported of crosslinguistic generalization of treatment effect to untreated language. This promising research, however, needs to be replicated and extended to novel language pairs. Research on crosslinguistic generalization of treatment effects is of paramount importance to multilingual countries like India. For instance, with several hundreds of languages and dialects spoken across India and with the pervasive use of English as second language, speech language pathologists (SLPs) in the country are often baffled on the selection of language for treatment in bilingual persons with aphasia. Empirical evidence from Indian languages would add confidence to the SLPs while selecting language for treatment in person with aphasia. In this context, the current study aimed to replicate and extend the earlier findings on crosslinguistic generalization of treatment effects in bilingual persons with aphasia to the Indian context.


Introduction
The last two decades witnessed several novel treatment approaches to aphasia therapy.Semantic feature-based therapy is one of such treatment approaches that gained considerable research attention (Boyle & Coelho, 1995).More importantly, this treatment approach has been found effective in bilingual persons with aphasia.For instance, Edmonds and Kiran (2006) administered semantic feature based therapy in Spanish-English bilingual persons with aphasia and reported of crosslinguistic generalization of treatment effect to untreated language.This promising research, however, needs to be replicated and extended to novel language pairs.Research on crosslinguistic generalization of treatment effects is of paramount importance to multilingual countries like India.For instance, with several hundreds of languages and dialects spoken across India and with the pervasive use of English as second language, speech language pathologists (SLPs) in the country are often baffled on the selection of language for treatment in bilingual persons with aphasia.Empirical evidence from Indian languages would add confidence to the SLPs while selecting language for treatment in person with aphasia.In this context, the current study aimed to replicate and extend the earlier findings on crosslinguistic generalization of treatment effects in bilingual persons with aphasia to the Indian context.

Methods
This investigation was carried out in Karnataka, a southern state in India, where the primary spoken language is Kannada.We recruited three bilingual (Kannada-English) persons with aphasia for the current study.Their premorbid proficiency was calculated with a rating scale rated either by the participants or with the help of an intimate family member.While participant 1 (P1) was equally proficient in both languages, P2 and P3 were more proficient in Kannada.Table 1 provides the demographic data as well as language proficiency of the three participants.Prior to as well as following the administration of semantic feature-based treatment, the language skills of the participants were assessed with Western Aphasia Battery (Chengappa & Kumar, 2008), Bilingual Aphasia Test (Paradis & Rangamani, 1989), and Boston Naming Test (Shanthala, 1997) (see Table 2) in Kannada and English.
________________________ Table 1 about here ________________________ Table 2 about here ________________________ We employed the methods of Edmonds and Kiran (2006) for preparing treatment probes as well as administering treatment in our participants.From an initial set of 300 pictures that were administered on each participant, 50 unsuccessfully named pictures were selected for the training purpose.The names of these pictures were neither cognates nor had 50% or more phonetic similarity in both languages.The selected items for each participant varied from that of other participants as the final items (n = 50) were selected based on the individual naming failures.All items belonged to various semantic categories like animals, fruits, household articles etc.
For each participant, two sessions of therapy, each lasting for 2 hours, were provided on a weekly basis.Unlike in Edmonds and Kiran (2006), the participants were assessed only twice (i.e., before & after therapy) in the current study.

Discussion
The results of this investigation are, in general, on par with earlier similar investigations (e.g., Edmonds & Kiran, 2006).In their study, these authors observed improvements in both languages subsequent to the provision of treatment in L2 in balanced (i.e., equally proficient) bilinguals.However, in dominant bilinguals, where there exists a difference in proficiency level between the languages, provision of treatment in weaker language resulted in crosslinguistic generalization and the results of this study corroborated their findings.This in turn, supports the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) of bilingual language system.Additionally, it may be noted that the pre-and post-therapy evaluations revealed overall improvement in languages skills of all three participants in the current study.Though unexpected, this observation warrants further exploration of the generalized effects of strengthening the semantic system on the overall language skills.

Conclusion
The current study replicated and extended the previous evidence on crosslinguistic generalization of semantic therapy to the Indian context.The outcomes from the current study provide empirical evidence for selecting language of treatment in bilingual persons with aphasia in the pervasively bi-/multilingual Indian context.