Maria Kambanaros

Noun and verb processing in Greek-English bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia and the effect of instrumentality and verb-noun name relation

Noun and verb comprehension and production was investigated in two groups of late bilingual, Greek-English speakers: individuals with anomic aphasia and a control group of non-brain injured individuals matched for age and gender. There were no significant differences in verb or noun comprehension between the two groups in either language. However, verb and noun production during picture naming was significantly worse in the bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia in both languages, who also showed a specific verb impairment in Greek and English. The potential underlying level of breakdown of the specific verb impairment was further investigation with reference to two specific features of verbs: instrumentality and verb-noun relationship. Additional results revealed a facilitatory effect of Instrumentality in both languages. However, there was no effect of verb-noun name relation in Greek, and a negative effect of verb-noun name relation was observed in English. Lemma retrieval seemed to be intact in this group of bilingual individuals whose main problem seemed to arise during the retrieval of the phonological representation of the target word. This impairment was greater in English. The findings are discussed in terms of three current models of word production.

Lexical retrieval for nouns and verbs in typically developing bilectal children

Previous evidence shows that nouns are easier for many language users to retrieve than verbs, but scant research has been conducted with children in bilectal environments (where both standard and non-standard forms of a language are spoken). This study investigates object and action naming in children who are native speakers of a non-standard variety, Cypriot Greek (CG), but instructed scholastically in the official variety, Standard Modern Greek (SMG). Participants were typically developing Greek Cypriot preschoolers and early school-aged children who completed the Cypriot Object and Action Test (COAT). Results revealed a significant grammatical word class effect favoring nouns over verbs in Modern Greek, with a developmental change in the size of the noun–verb gap. Both age groups showed similar error patterns for both object and action targets. For action names, children produced more semantic descriptions or circumlocutions (e.g., hitting the nail for hammering), whereas omissions were the prominent error type for object names. The findings are discussed in relation to cross-linguistic evidence of grammatical word class differences using the picture naming paradigm for monolingual (pre)school-aged children.

Action and object naming versus verb and noun retrieval in connected speech: Comparisons in late bilingual Greek–English anomic speakers

Background: Recently, verb–noun processing differences were reported in a group of late bilingual speakers with fluent, anomic aphasia in Greek (L1) as well as in English (L2) (Kambanaros & van Steenbrugge, 2006). The findings revealed that verb production was significantly more impaired than noun production in both languages during picture naming despite preserved comprehension of action and object names. Aims: The aim of this study is to investigate the total number (quantity) and the diversity (quality or different types) of verbs and nouns produced in conversational speech by the same group of bilingual anomic individuals with aphasia and compare the results to (i) those of the non‐brain‐injured control group and (ii) their action and object naming performances at the single word level, to determine if grammatical class impairments are also evident in spontaneous speech. Methods & Procedures: In order to examine the distribution and diversity of verbs and nouns in spontaneous speech, speech samples of 300 words were collected from the bilingual individuals with fluent aphasia and their controls in L1 and in L2 on two separate occasions, 1 week apart. In addition, two subtests from the Greek Object and Action Test (GOAT: Kambanaros, 2003), the object and action naming subtests, were presented on two separate occasions, 1 week apart, to both groups of bilingual participants in L1 and L2 (cf. Kambanaros & van Steenbrugge, 2006). Outcomes & Results: Late bilingual participants with anomia showed no difficulties retrieving verbs in spontaneous speech in L1 or L2 despite a significant verb deficit in both languages on action naming tasks. However the bilingual group had significant difficulties in relation to noun production in spontaneous speech in L1 and L2. Conclusions: Picture naming remains the standard of word retrieval ability in aphasia. However, object and action naming scores can underestimate and/or overestimate word retrieval performance for nouns and verbs in connected speech.

On the nature of verb-noun dissociations in bilectal SLI: a psycholinguistic perspective from Greek

We report on object and action picture-naming accuracy in two groups of bilectal speakers in Cyprus, children with typical language development (TLD) and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Object names were overall better retrieved than action names by both groups. Given that comprehension for action names was relatively intact for all children, this finding is taken to be the result of a breakdown at the interface of the semantic lexicon and phonological representations, or access to them. The results complement similar research on English, a minimally inflected language in contrast to Greek. Overall, cross-linguistic word class effects provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that grammatical category is an organizing principle shared across languages. Finally, our results suggest that bilectal children with SLI present with general lexical delay rather than a deficit in verb naming per se.

Time for a step change? Improving the efficiency, relevance, reliability, validity and transparency of aphasia rehabilitation research through core outcome measures, a common data set and improved reporting criteria

Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK Division of Linguistics, University of Athens, Athens, Greece Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain Language Theory and Communication Sciences Department, Division of Internal Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Division of Linguistics, University of Athens, Athens, Greece on behalf of the Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists

Comparing Multilingual Children with SLI to Their Bilectal Peers: Evidence from Object and Action Picture Naming.

Against the background of the increasing number of multilingual children with atypical language development around the world, this study reports research results on grammatical word class processing involving children with specific language impairment (SLI). The study investigates lexical retrieval of verbs (through picture-naming actions) and compares performances for the same children with noun retrieval (through picture-naming objects). It was found that nouns (object names) were better retrieved than verbs (action names) in the multilingual group with SLI, a finding similar to bilectal peers with SLI and typically developing language-matched controls. The results suggest that grammatical class is an organising principle shared across languages. Moreover, when tested in first and third language, multilingual children with SLI revealed a comparable verb–noun dissociation both in terms of the direction of the effect (V < N) and major error type. These findings are discussed in relation to the delayed acquisition hypothesis for SLI and psycholinguistic models of multilingualism.

Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters’ social or language status, but not with the raters’ age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.

Group effects of instrumentality and name relation on action naming in bilingual anomic aphasia.

Verb production in sentences was investigated in two groups of late bilingual Greek-English speakers: individuals with anomic aphasia and a control group. Verb retrieval in sentences was significantly impaired in both languages for the individuals with anomic aphasia. Additional results revealed no effect of instrumentality on action naming in sentences in either language. However, there was a negative effect of verb-noun name relation on instrumental verb production in English only. Results confirm intact verb lemma retrieval for this group of bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia, but a breakdown at the level of accessing the phonological or lexical form.

Interpreters and language assessment: Confrontation naming and interpreting

There has been an increase in issues regarding the involvement of interpreters in the assessment of language disorders in bilingual individuals. Most publications focus on overall issues, such as the respective roles of the speech pathologist and interpreter, the need for teamwork, the need to share information about the assessment methods and materials used, and the need for a three stage process of briefing, interaction and debriefing. The current article stresses the need for speech pathologists to share more of their professional knowledge with the interpreter, specifically knowledge about typical responses and behaviours of clients that form essential data or evidence in the diagnosis of a particular disorder, for example bilingual aphasia. This point is illustrated by a small case study of translated responses of a bilingual individual with aphasia during confrontation naming in the native language.

Action and object naming in schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate impaired action verbal fluency, but no study has examined verb–noun differences using picture naming. The present study compared object and action naming in 20 adult patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (DSM–IV–TR, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–Fourth Edition, Text Revision; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria, and 20 demographically matched healthy controls, using pictures. Overall, schizophrenic patients showed poorer naming than controls on all measures of object and action lexical semantic access and retrieval despite normal comprehension for action and object names. Results further indicated that action names were significantly more difficult to retrieve than object names in schizophrenic patients. The absence of dissociation in comprehension of action and object names but semantic errors in naming both classes suggests intact conceptual–semantic stores among middle-aged community-dwelling outpatients with schizophrenia but difficulties mapping semantics onto the lexicon. Action-naming impairments can arise from both semantic and postsemantic origins in schizophrenia. These results have implications for the neurobiology of language given the association between both schizophrenia and verb processing and frontal damage. Moreover, the issue being addressed is important for a cognitive characterization of schizophrenia and for an understanding of the representations of action and object names in the brain.