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PubMed2001

[Communication barriers in the management of immigrants and their children. An analysis and possible solutions based on case reports].

Up to 41% of patients treated in health care institutions and hospitals in Vienna are non-German-speaking. As one half of the foreign population of Vienna speaks little or no German, their treatment in health care institutions is a difficult issue. Based on exemplary case reports, linguistic and socio-cultural communication barriers in health care are presented and the problematic area of foreign-language communication is analysed. Misunderstandings due to communication barriers not only have a negative financial impact on health care economy, they also complicate the individual care of these patients. Based on the experience gained thus far and in concurrence with the developments in other European countries, the use of professional interpreters who combine their role as linguistic intermediaries with the cultural features of foreign-language patients (community interpreters) should be encouraged. The use of specifically trained internal hospital staff is recommended as well. A concept to coordinate central organisations that provide interpreters in the public field may substantially enhance the quality and efficiency of health care in this special situation.

Austria↗
PubMed2001

The specific-word frequency effect: implications for the representation of homophones in speech production.

In a series of experiments, the authors investigated whether naming latencies for homophones (e.g., /nlambdan/) are a function of specific-word frequency (i.e., the frequency of nun) or a function of cumulative-homophone frequency (i.e., the sum of the frequencies of nun and none). Specific-word but not cumulative-homophone frequency affected picture-naming latencies. This result was obtained in 2 languages (English and Chinese). An analogous finding was obtained in a translation task, where bilingual speakers produced the English names of visually presented Spanish words. Control experiments ruled out that these results are an artifact of orthographic or articulatory factors, or of visual recognition. The results argue against the hypothesis that homophones share a common word-form representation, and support instead a model in which homophones have fully independent representations.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Seven ipsative keys to understanding the poor 'Hispanic' student in the USA].

INTRODUCTION: Examination of the special bilingual student (5% of the bilingual student population of the USA) permits us to use not only (1) the statistical reports of the population coefficients and percentages), (2) measurements of progress or performance (age in years or grades of progress at school) and (3) the neuropsychological dimensions of the brain (left and right, anterior and posterior, inferior and superior). DEVELOPMENT: It is possible to put into parenthesis the statistical norms, either national, local, regional or even Hispanic national, given the great disparity seen in the results. At the present time the Hispanic population is made up mainly of young persons, recent immigrants with limited education. So it is logical that there are three major sources of error for students who do an exam in a foreign language when they are already disadvantaged and handicapped. Alternatively, we may pay attention to ipsative comparisons (of the same subject regarding different aspects of his behavior), which are almost free of any norm but comparison between themselves. CONCLUSIONS: Here we list a series of comparisons connected with concrete and abstract conduct, asynchrony between knowledge and operations, hand work (unilateral and bilateral), linguistic and academic performance, in one language or the other. The comparisons observed help us to understand, in a new, relevant manner, the cognitive and academic function of the child who is handicapped, disadvantaged and bilingual . It also allows us to describe the basic dimensions of his cognitive and academic progress.

Brain↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Lexical and syntactic errors in translation by Italian/English bilinguals.

Translation is recognized as a specific linguistic ability in bilinguals. Yet, we know little about what factors influence translation ability, especially at the sentence level. In this study, adults were asked to translate sentences from English (L2) into Italian (L1). We hypothesized that (1) adults with later age of arrival in Canada would perform better in translating into their native language than adults with earlier age of arrival, and therefore earlier L2 acquisition and (2) adults with higher use of L1 would perform better than adults with low use. Participants (N = 70) formed 4 groups based on their age of arrival in Canada (AoA) and their reported use of Italian. The translated sentences were scored for syntactic and lexical correctness, and for the number of omitted words. There were significant AoA group effects: late arrival in Canada was associated with better performance. There were no effects for reported frequency of use of Italian Both self-ratings and native Italian listener ratings of the translated sentences correlated highly with number of correct sentences.

Female↗
PubMed2002

[Refugees, migrants, language barrier: opinion of physicians on translation aids].

When the patient and caregiver do not share a common language, an interpreter is not always the best solution, and in any case, one cannot be present for every visit, especially in the case of an emergency. According to a questionnaire that was sent to all of the physicians who are members of a health care network for asylum seekers in the Swiss canton of Vaud (n = 169), it appears that 45% of practitioners found a telephone translation service to be a practical solution, and 58% would like medical glossaries with phonetic pronunciation and visual illustrations made available. With a response rate of 91%, it is estimated that these two types of services would be used as often as qualified interpreters, if they were made available. Other translating aids are also proposed.

Communication Barriers↗
PubMed2002

Visual word recognition in bilinguals: phonological priming from the second to the first language.

In this study, the authors show that cross-lingual phonological priming is possible not only from the 1st language (L1) to the 2nd language (L2), but also from L2 to L1. In addition, both priming effects were found to have the same magnitude and to not be related to differences in word naming latencies between L1 and L2. The findings are further evidence against language-selective access models of bilingual word processing and are more in line with strong phonological models of visual word recognition than with the traditional dual-route models.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Bilingual men but not women display less left ear but not right ear accuracy during dichotic listening compared to monolinguals.

Thirty monolingual university men and women and 33 bilingual university men and women who had learned English after 5 years of age were administered Roberts' Dichotic Word Listening Test. The bilingual men committed twice the numbers of errors for words presented to the left ear but not to the right ear or to both ears when compared to the bilingual women, the monolingual men, or the monolingual women. The latter three groups did not differ significantly from each other. This interaction between sex and language history explained about 16% of the variance in the numbers of errors for the left ear. The results are related to other studies that showed men who acquired English after the age of 5 years exhibited a relative weakness for verbal memory but not for figural memory compared to bilingual women or monolingual men and women. Implications for the relative accuracies of verbal memory are considered.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Building phonotactic knowledge in bilinguals: role of early exposure.

Timing and amount of exposure to a 2nd language in the acquisition of phonotactic restrictions was examined in 4 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 10-month-old monolingual and bilingual Catalan-Spanish infants were presented with nonwords that were phonotactically legal or illegal in Catalan and phonotactically illegal in Spanish. Differences between the 4 groups of infants were obtained as a function of language dominance. In Experiments 3 and 4, adult Spanish-Catalan bilinguals were compared with the same materials. Catalan-dominant bilinguals were more accurate than Spanish-dominant bilinguals in their perception of legal sequences; however, they were not more accurate with illegal sequences. The findings suggest a complex correlation between the pattern of preference and the amount and timing of exposure.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2002

Semantic and letter fluency in Spanish-English bilinguals.

Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals completed 12 semantic, 10 letter, and 2 proper name fluency categories. Bilinguals produced fewer exemplars than monolinguals on all category types, but the difference between groups was larger (and more consistent) on semantic categories. Bilinguals and monolinguals produced the same number of errors across all category types. The authors discuss 2 accounts of the similarities and differences between groups and the interaction with category type, including (a) cross-language interference and (b) relatively weak connections in the bilingual lexical system because of reduced use of words specific to each language. Surprisingly, bilinguals' fluency scores did not improve when they used words in both languages. This result suggests that voluntary language switching incurs a processing cost.

Adult↗