Investigating Language Switching and Speaking a Nondominant Language as Markers of Alzheimer's Risk in Spanish-English Bilinguals

In this episode Dr. Scott Sperling and student leader, Dr. Kritika Nayar, discuss the paper  Language Switching and Speaking a Non-Dominant Language Challenge Executive Control: Preliminary Data for Novel Behavioral Markers of Alzheimer's Risk in Spanish-English Bilinguals, with the paper's authors, Ms. Dalia Lopez Garcia and Dr. Tamar Gollan. In this study, using psycholinguistic analyses, authors explored language switching and speaking a nondominant language as markers of Alzheimer's risk in Spanish-English bilinguals. All 19 participants, who were cognitively healthy, completed neuropsychological testing, a structured interview (in both Spanish and English), and language switching tasks. Following this, 8 individuals were diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In analyzing differences in their performance in this earlier testing, results showed that certain utterances in their nondominant language (e.g., revisions, repetitions, filled pauses) as well errors in a language switching test were particularly indicative of AD risk. Overall, these measures may reflect early decline in executive control abilities and may be valuable indicators of AD risk in this bilingual population.