Yasmeen Faroqi-Shah

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Maryland, College Park

Purpose The present meta-analysis investigated the efficacy of anomia treatment in bilingual and multilingual persons with aphasia (BPWAs) by assessing the magnitudes of six anomia treatment outcomes. Three of the treatment outcomes pertained to the “trained language”: improvement of trained words (treatment effect [TE]), within-language generaliza...

Pronouns are unique linguistic devices that allow for the expression of referential relationships. Despite their communicative utility, the neural correlates of the operations involved in reference assignment and/or resolution , are not well-understood. The present study synthesized the neuroimaging literature on pronoun processing to test extant t...

The language production deficit in post-stroke agrammatic aphasia (PSA-G) tends to result from lesions to the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and is characterized by a triad of symptoms: fragmented sentences, errors in functional morphology, and a dearth of verbs. Despite decades of research, the mechanisms underlying production patterns in PSA-...

Background Producing and comprehending language requires maintenance of linguistic units in short term memory (STM). While there is evidence of verbal STM impairments in persons with aphasia (PWA), there are unresolved questions about other aspects of STM in aphasia, particularly the role of input and output modalities on STM performance. This incl...

The romanization of non-alphabetic scripts, particularly in digital contexts, is a widespread phenomenon across many languages. However, the effect of script romanization on English reading by bilinguals with English as a second language is underexamined. Guided by the premises of the script relativity hypothesis and the Bilingual Interactive Activ...

Aims and objectives Studies of code-switching (CS) in bilingual speakers using laboratory tasks have been equivocal on whether CS is cognitively demanding. The goal of this study was to examine time costs at the juncture of a CS in a more ecologically valid experimental paradigm. Methodology English (L1)–French (L2) bilingual speakers performed tw...

Little is known about the effects of exercise training (ET) on lexical characteristics during fluency task and its association with cerebellum functional connectivity. The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate whether ET alters response patterns during phonemic and semantic fluency tasks and (2) to assess the association between ET-related...

Agrammatic aphasia is an acquired language disorder characterized by slow, non-fluent speech that include primarily content words. It is well-documented that people with agrammatism (PWA) have difficulty with production of verbs and verb morphology, but it is unknown whether these deficits occur at the single word-level, or are the result of a sent...

Bilingual speakers are less accurate and slower than monolinguals in word production. This bilingual cost has been demonstrated primarily for nouns. This study compared verb and noun retrieval to better understand bilingual lexical representation and test alternate hypotheses about bilingual cost. Picture naming speeds from highly proficient Englis...

Background The use of standardized tests specifically designed for and normed on bilingual groups is crucial for the accurate diagnosis and language profiling of bilingual speakers with aphasia. Currently, there is a dearth of norms and supporting psychometric data for the few available bilingual aphasia assessments. The only available aphasia test...

Background: Communication partners (CP) of persons with aphasia (PWA), such as their family members and significant others, need to adjust their communication patterns to accommodate the challenges of aphasia. They may choose to simplify their language or use more gestures to accommodate the language deficits of the PWA. Other behaviors, such as in...

Persons with aphasia (PWA) frequently experience difficulties in retrieving verbs. Little is known about mechanisms underlying verb retrieval, both in neurologically healthy adults and PWA. The present study investigated two questions pertaining to action verb naming: 1) if any properties of a verb influence naming efficiency, particularly, somatot...

Purpose When speakers retrieve words, they do so extremely quickly and accurately—both speed and accuracy of word retrieval are compromised in persons with aphasia (PWA). This study examined the contribution of two domain-general mechanisms: processing speed and cognitive control on word retrieval in PWA. Method Three groups of participants, neuro...

Objective: Exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction (EILO) occurs with paradoxical vocal fold motion or supraglottic collapse during moderate to vigorous exercise. Previously, Gallena et al (2015) reported lower-than-normal inspiratory (Ri) and expiratory (Re) resistances during resting tidal breathing (RTB) in female teenage athletes with EILO. Thi...

Purpose Language decline has been associated with healthy aging and with various neurodegenerative conditions, making it challenging to differentiate among these conditions. This study examined the utility of linguistic measures derived from a short narrative language sample for 1) identifying language characteristics and cut-off scores to differen...

Background: The relationship between structural processing in music and language can be viewed from two perspectives: whether the neural processing of music and language recruits shared neural resources, and whether musical ability is associated with neuroplastic resilience against language impairment. Aims: This study investigated music and langua...

A multidisciplinary team of experts took stock of the current state of affairs about many aspects of aphasia in India, including community burden, diagnostic assessment, therapy, rehabilitation, research, education, and advocacy. The broad spectrum of aphasiology was matched by the types of participants ranging from neurologists, speech-language pa...

The finding that noun production is slower and less accurate in bilinguals compared to monolinguals is well replicated, but not well understood. This study examined the two prominent theoretical accounts for this bilingual effect: weaker links and cross-language interference. Highly proficient Mandarin–English bilinguals and English-speaking monoli...

The distinction between nouns and verbs is a language universal. Yet, functional neuroimaging studies comparing noun and verb processing have yielded inconsistent findings, ranging from a complete frontal(verb)–temporal(noun) dichotomy to a complete overlap in activation patterns. The current study addressed the debate about neural distinctions bet...

Purpose Performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), among the most widely used global screens of adult cognitive status, is affected by demographic variables including age, education, and ethnicity. This study extends prior research by examining the specific effects of bilingualism on MMSE performance. Method Sixty independent communi...

Introduction Prior research has shown a bilingual disadvantage in spoken language, that is, less efficient performance compared to monolinguals. The bilingual disadvantage is found in lexical retrieval in L2 (Gollan et al., 2005) and in L1 (Ivanova and Costa, 2008). Evidence of the bilingual disadvantage for lexical retrieval was limited to nouns,...

Background The ability to generate words that follow certain constraints, or verbal fluency, is a sensitive indicator of neurocognitive impairment, and is impacted by a variety of variables. Aims To investigate the effect of post-stroke aphasia, elicitation category and linguistic variables on verbal fluency performance. Methods & Procedures Twe...

A major challenge in understanding the origin of clinical symptoms in neuropsychological impairments is capturing the complexity of the underlying cognitive structure. This paper presents a practical guide to path modeling, a statistical approach that is well-suited for modeling multivariate outcomes with a multi-factorial origin. We discuss a step...

Evidence for shared processing of structure (or syntax) in language and in music conflicts with neuropsychological dissociations between the two. However, while harmonic structural processing can be impaired in patients with spared linguistic syntactic abilities (Peretz, I. (1993). Auditory atonalia for melodies. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 10, 21–5...

Current symbol-based dictionaries providing vocabulary support for persons with the language disorder, aphasia, are housed on smartphones or other portable devices. To employ the support on these external devices requires the user to divert their attention away from their conversation partner, to the neglect of conversation dynamics like eye contac...

It is proposed that successful word retrieval involves lateral inhibition of lexical competitors, and suppression of the non-target language in bilingual speakers. Thus cognitive control is crucial for word production. Given that word retrieval difficulty is a hallmark feature of aphasia, the relationship between word retrieval and cognitive contro...

Some individuals with aphasia preferably use semantically general light verbs, whereas others prefer semantically specific heavy verbs. This study aimed to test Gordon and Dell's division of labor hypothesis that light versus heavy verb usage depends on syntactic and semantic processes, respectively. In a retrospective analysis of data from the Aph...

In some fields, Big Data has been instrumental in analyzing, predicting, and influencing human behavior. However, Big Data approaches have so far been less central in speech-language pathology. This article introduces the concept of Big Data and provides examples of Big Data initiatives pertaining to adult neurorehabilitation. It also discusses the...

In a majority of languages, the time of an event is expressed by marking tense on the verb. There is substantial evidence that the production of verb tense in sentences is more severely impaired than other functional categories in persons with agrammatic aphasia. The underlying source of this verb tense impairment is less clear, particularly in ter...

INTRODUCTION Difficulty in retrieving verbs is three times more common than a noun-specific impairment, irrespective of aphasia subtype or lesion location (Matzig et al., 2009). While explanations for verb deficits have included impairments in action representations, manipulability, instrumentality, and abstraction, the most prominent account is a...

INTRODUCTION Current understanding of the bilingual mental lexicon is limited by the predominant empirical focus on nouns in word production studies. The bilingual disadvantage, which refers to bilinguals’ poorer naming ability even in the first language, is consistently reported for nouns (Gollan et al., 2011; Ivanova & Costa, 2008). Explanations...

A growing body of work suggests that processing hierarchical structure in language and in music rely on shared systems (review: Slevc, 2012), however this conclusion is tempered by neuropsychological dissociations between linguistic and musical processing (i.e., aphasia and amusia; review: Peretz, 2006). An influential reconciliation comes from Pat...

Numerous studies have documented difficulties in verbal expression and auditory processing of morphosyntax, including verb morphology, in persons with agrammatic aphasia (PWA) (e.g., Bastiaanse & Thompson, 2012; Faroqi-Shah & Dickey, 2009; Tyler et al., 2002). It is not known if difficulties with verb morphology are a downstream effect of early (su...

The cognitive processes underlying word production involve selecting a target lexical representation from numerous similar representations. Thus successful lexical selection during word retrieval should engage cognitive control to inhibit lexical competitors and the target word after selection. Word retrieval difficulty is a hallmark feature of aph...

Background: Three aspects of language production are impaired to different degrees in individuals with post-stroke aphasia: ability to repeat words and nonwords, name pictures, and produce sentences. These impairments often persist into the chronic stages, and the neuroanatomical distribution of lesions associated with chronicity of each of these i...

This study investigated phonological encoding of verb and noun pictures in neurotypical adults with an exploration in three adults with aphasia. Findings indicated slower phonological encoding for verbs relative to nouns in neurotypical adults, while the findings for adults with aphasia were variable.

In a majority of languages, the time of an event is expressed by marking tense on the verb. There is substantial evidence that the production of verb tense in sentences is more severely impaired than other functional categories in persons with agrammatic aphasia. The underlying source of this verb tense impairment is less clear, particularly in ter...

Background: Production of verb morphology, especially tense marking, is frequently impaired in persons with agrammatic aphasia. Very little research has examined theoretically driven treatments for verb morphology deficits in aphasia. Aims: This study examined the relative efficacy of using regular (wash-washed, rob-robbed) versus irregular (drink-...

Developing cultural competence in interacting with people with aphasia who represent varied racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds is an important goal for all aphasiologists in clinical and research contexts. Given that Asian Indians (a) are one of the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority groups to migrate to the United States and Canad...

The aim of this paper is to provide information about the ethnocultural and linguistic characteristics of South Asians, because South Asians are one of the most rapidly growing groups in North America. This paper overviews demographic and immigration history and describes sociocultural characteristics and major languages used by speakers of South A...

Sorry, this activity is no longer available for CEUs. Visit the SIG 14 page on the ASHA Store to see available CE activities. Use the CE questions PDF here as study questions to guide your Perspectives reading.

Background: Some individuals with fluent aphasia produce jargon errors in speech production. Jargon likely results from derailed encoding operations required for language production, although the exact mechanism remains debated. It is also unclear if persons who produce jargon are able to self-monitor; that is, detect the non-word status of their i...

Verb retrieval difficulties are common in aphasia; however, few successful treatments have been documented (e.g. Conroy, P., Sage, K., & Lambon Ralph, M. A. (2006) . Towards theory-driven therapies for aphasic verb impairments: A review of current theory and practice. Aphasiology, 20, 1159-1185). This study investigated the efficacy of a novel verb...

Background: Verb production impairments are well documented in aphasia, especially in non-fluent aphasias with lesions of the left frontal lobe. Evidence is inconclusive about whether the impaired verb production is accompanied by inefficient processing and comprehension of verbs. It is unknown if specific semantic features of verbs, such as knowle...

There are several accounts of why some individuals with post-stroke aphasia experience difficulty in producing morphologically complex verbs. Although a majority of these individuals also produce syntactically flawed utterances, at least two accounts focus on word-level encoding operations. One account proposes a difficulty with rule-governed affix...

Language proficiency in bilingualism, and hence bilingual aphasia, is a multifaceted phenomenon: influenced by variables such as age of onset, literacy, usage patterns, and emotional valence. Although the majority of the world and growing US population is bilingual, relatively little is known about the best practices for language therapy in bilingu...

Word retrieval deficits for specific grammatical categories, such as verbs versus nouns, occur as a consequence of brain damage. Such deficits are informative about the nature of lexical organization in the human brain. This study examined retrieval of grammatical categories across three languages in a trilingual person with aphasia who spoke Arabi...

Background: Aphasia therapy that involves a high weekly intensity, short overall duration, restriction of nonverbal communication, coupled with constraints on verbal complexity, has recently gained momentum (constraint‐induced language therapy, or CILT). The gains have been documented primarily for formal language tests, especially in lexical retri...

Agrammatic aphasic individuals exhibit marked production deficits for tense morphology. This paper presents three experiments examining whether a group of English-speaking agrammatic individuals (n = 10) exhibit parallel deficits in their comprehension of tense. Results from two comprehension experiments (on-line grammaticality judgment studies) su...

Errors in the production of verb inflections, especially tense inflections, are pervasive in agrammatic Broca's aphasia (*The boy eat). The neurolinguistic underpinnings of these errors are debated. One group of theories attributes verb inflection errors to disruptions in encoding the verb's morphophonological form, resulting from either a general...

The cognitive mechanisms and neuroanatomical substrates used by the brain to effortlessly generate morphologically complex words (write + ing --> writing) are little understood. The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG, including Broca's area) is often implicated as being involved, although its specific role is unclear. Data from brain damaged individ...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare cortical organization of the first (L1, Russian) and second (L2, English) languages. Six fluent Russian-English bilinguals who acquired their second language postpuberty were tested with words and nonwords presented either auditorily or visually. Results showed that both languages activated...

Across most languages, verbs produced by agrammatic aphasic individuals are frequently marked by syntactically and semantically inappropriate inflectional affixes, such as Last night, I walking home. As per language production models, verb inflection errors in English agrammatism could arise from three potential sources: encoding the verbs' morphol...

Verb inflection errors, often seen in agrammatic aphasic speech, have been attributed to either impaired encoding of diacritical features that specify tense and aspect, or to impaired affixation during phonological encoding. In this study we examined the effect of semantic markedness, word form frequency and affix frequency, as well as accuracy and...

The production of regular and irregular past tense inflections in aphasia, especially agrammatic Broca's aphasia has aroused con- siderable theoretical interest due to it's implications for the dual-me- chanism account of inflectional morphology. For example, Ullman et al. (1997) found differences in the accuracy of regular (20%) and irregular verb...

This study compared the sentence production abilities of individuals with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia in an attempt to explore the extent to which impaired lexical retrieval impedes sentence production. The ability to produce active and passive reversible and non-reversible sentences was examined when varying amounts of lexical information was p...

Thesis (Ph. D., Communication Sciences and Disorders)--Northwestern University, 2004.