Verbal Perseveration in Malayalam - English Bilinguals

Abstract

The present study intended to investigate the nature of perseverations in Malayalam-English bilingual typical elderly individuals and compare the perseveratory errors between their languages viz. Malayalam, (their mother tongue), a language spoken by the native people of the state of Kerala, in South India and English which was acquired later in life. The study included twenty typical bilingual {first language (Ll)-Malaya/am and second language (L2)-English} elderly individuals and twenty age and gender matched monolingual (Malayalam speaking) elderly individuals within the age group of 60-80 years. The subjects were tested in two language conditions using the following five tasks: confrontation naming, generative naming, picture description, word definition and, question-answering. The audio recorded responses were transcribed and the data was subjected to appropriate statistical analysis. The results revealed significant lesser perseveration in bilingual individuals which highlighted the presence of cognitive advantage in the bilingual group. There was no significant difference between the type and frequency of perseverations across both languages of a bilingual. Further, no gender and age related differences were seen in perseveration. The study supports bilingualism as a type of cognitive stimulation. Also it extends support for the disinhibition account of perseveration as well as for the inhibitory deficit hypothesis of language and aging. The study implies the striking need for a deeper understanding of perseveratory phenomenon so as to reflect on the potential of this particular cognitive linguistic behavior as a sensitive cognitive linguistic measure.