Selective Impairment in First Language with Preserved Second Language Articulation: A Case Study

In this article, we report the case of patient KK who, following cerebral infection, appears to have lost communicative ability in her first language but can communicate effectively in a second language. In experiments 1 and 2, KK made a disproportionately greater number of speech production errors in response to orthographically and phonologically presented Shona words compared to control subjects. No difference was observed between KK’s performance and that of the control subjects when the same tasks were administered using common English words. The results obtained in experiment 3 showed that although KK found it extremely difficult to read aloud (or repeat after the experimenter) common Shona words, her ability to access the correct meanings of these words was not impaired. KK’s performance in a task which required her to select the correct meaning in English of 60 common Shona words was well above chance (90%+ correct). It is argued that KK’s problems occur at the phonological output level. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.