Language therapy and bilingual aphasia: Clinical implications of psycholinguistic and neuroimaging research

Given the increasing number of bilinguals around the world, bilingual aphasia has become a hot topic in the field of clinical and theoretical research in communication sciences. The aim of this article is to provide data-driven cues for intervention with bilingual aphasia. First, the impact of a number of factors considered to influence second language processing will be discussed with reference to neurolinguistic and neuroimaging data. The discussion will then move to bilingual aphasia. Specifically, we shall describe the recovery patterns following bilingual aphasia, and discuss the issues of pathological mixing and switching. The literature and clinical evidence will provide the framework for a discussion of data-driven cues for intervention with bilingual aphasia. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.