A multilingual assessment approach in aphasia: Evidence from three Spanish-English speakers with primary progressive aphasia

Language assessment in multilingual people with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is typically conducted in one language, or in each of the person's languages separately. We examined a novel approach to the administration and scoring of language production assessment, without restricting the assessment to one language. We describe our multilingual approach to testing, which presented material and instructions in two languages and encouraged participants to use either of their languages. We used this approach to administer and score four language production tests with three Spanish-English individuals with PPA. Testing results revealed that language choice was associated with task, showing increased use of the first-acquired language with increased production length. Language selection was not associated with the language of the prompt. The study demonstrates the feasibility of testing bilingual individuals in both their languages without restricting language choice and highlights methodological, clinical, and theoretical implications.