Diagnostic markers of language impairment in bilingual adults

双语成人语言障碍的诊断标志 项目摘要 失语症是指局灶性或退行性脑损伤后的语言障碍， 由于其社会，情感和经济方面的原因，对一个人的生活质量产生了削弱作用 影响。很大一部分失语症患者是双语者，因为他们几乎 五分之一的美国人口和超过一半的世界人口是双语者。的 不同熟练程度的双语者和 失语症使得双语失语症的诊断特别具有挑战性。然而，几乎没有 任何心理测量学上有效的诊断工具来诊断失语症，并将其与 双语者的语言差异。美国超过三分之二的临床医生报告说， 由于缺乏有效的诊断工具，无法对双语成人进行评估， 对双语语言障碍认识不足。这项研究代表了 第一个系统的心理测量学调查的临床语言措施，在英语， 跨多个语言领域的西班牙语-英语双语成年人。该项目将 确定语言措施、人口标准和分界分数，目的有三： 失语症的识别， 失语症该项目的成果将提高诊断准确性，从而减少 双语成人失语症的健康差异。

DIAGNOSTIC MARKERS OF LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT IN BILINGUAL ADULTS PROJECT SUMMARY Aphasia, which refers to language impairment following focal or degenerative brain injury, has a debilitating effect on a person’s quality of life due to its social, emotional and financial repercussions. A significant proportion of persons with aphasia are bilingual, given that nearly one-fifth of the U.S. population and over one-half of the world’s population is bilingual. The overlap in language behaviors between bilinguals of varying proficiency and persons with aphasia makes the diagnosis of bilingual aphasia particularly challenging. Yet, there are hardly any psychometrically valid diagnostic instruments to diagnose aphasia and differentiate it from the language variation seen across bilinguals. Over two-thirds of clinicians in the U.S. report being unprepared to assess bilingual adults due to unavailability of valid diagnostic tools and insufficient understanding of bilingual language disorders. The proposed research represents the first systematic psychometric investigation of clinical language measures in English for Spanish-English speaking bilingual adults across multiple language domains. The project will establish language measures, population norms and cut-off scores with a three-fold purpose: identification of aphasia, diagnosis of morphosyntactic and lexicosemantic impairments in aphasia. The outcomes of this project will improve diagnostic accuracy and therefore reduce health disparities for bilingual adults with aphasia.