Early recovery of a multi-lingual speaker with aphasia using Cantonese and English

This study reports a systematic monitoring of recovery from bilingual aphasia in a 75-year-old high-functioning multi-lingual female speaker of Cantonese and English, S1. She received six monthly evaluations after stroke by means of the Western Aphasia Battery and its Cantonese version (to monitor linguistic recovery and change of aphasia syndrome), cognitive linguistic quick test (to monitor cognitive recovery), and the main concept analysis (to assess the changes of narrative skills). Results indicated a non-parallel linguistic recovery, with a better improvement in her native L1 (Cantonese) than English. Since S1 demonstrated a change of using Cantonese dominantly post stroke, the results illustrated that a higher daily use of one language post-morbidly would lead to better post-morbid proficiency profile at the early recovery period. S1's changes in cognitive functions and narrative skills were also consistent with her linguistic improvement.