Language reconfiguration in bilinguals: a study with Huntington’s disease patients

Calabria, Marco; Pérez Pérez, Jesús; Martínez Horta, Saúl; Horta Barba, Andrea; Carceller, Mar; Kulisevsky, Jaime J.; Costa, Albert, 1970-

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lab.18022.cal

Language reconfiguration in bilinguals: a study with Huntington’s disease patients

Citation

Calabria M, Pérez Pérez J, Martínez-Horta S, Horta-Barba A, Carceller M, Kulisevsky J, Costa A. Language reconfiguration in bilinguals: a study with Huntington’s disease patients. Linguist Approaches Biling. 2018 Sep 10. DOI: 10.1075/lab.18022.cal

Abstract

The present study investigated language inhibition and cross-language interference as two possible mechanisms of bilingual language control (BLC) that can be affected by Huntington’s disease (HD), a neurodegenerative disease (ND) affecting the striatum. To this aim, the study explored the performance of pre-symptomatic and early-stage HD patients in two experimental tasks meant to elicit cross-language interference and language inhibition, including a Stroop task and a language switching task. The results revealed dissociations between these two mechanisms, indicating that language activation or inhibition is related to HD pathology while cross-language interference is not. Switch costs in HD patients were greater than controls in low-demand control conditions of language switching (longer preparation time), while Stroop effects were similar between the two groups of participants. This result was interpreted as a difficulty in overcoming the excessive inhibition applied to non-target language. The BLC processes related to the striatum and subcortical structures are discussed.