# Diagnostic markers of language impairment in bilingual adults

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK · 2022 · $188,050

## Abstract

DIAGNOSTIC MARKERS OF LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT IN BILINGUAL ADULTS
 PROJECT SUMMARY
Aphasia, which refers to language impairment following focal or degenerative brain injury, has a
debilitating effect on a person’s quality of life due to its social, emotional and financial
repercussions. A significant proportion of persons with aphasia are bilingual, given that nearly
one-fifth of the U.S. population and over one-half of the world’s population is bilingual. The
overlap in language behaviors between bilinguals of varying proficiency and persons with
aphasia makes the diagnosis of bilingual aphasia particularly challenging. Yet, there are hardly
any psychometrically valid diagnostic instruments to diagnose aphasia and differentiate it from
the language variation seen across bilinguals. Over two-thirds of clinicians in the U.S. report
being unprepared to assess bilingual adults due to unavailability of valid diagnostic tools and
insufficient understanding of bilingual language disorders. The proposed research represents
the first systematic psychometric investigation of clinical language measures in English for
Spanish-English speaking bilingual adults across multiple language domains. The project will
establish language measures, population norms and cut-off scores with a three-fold purpose:
identification of aphasia, diagnosis of morphosyntactic and lexicosemantic impairments in
aphasia. The outcomes of this project will improve diagnostic accuracy and therefore reduce
health disparities for bilingual adults with aphasia.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10448368
- **Project number:** 5R21DC018916-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
- **Principal Investigator:** Yasmeen Faroqi Shah
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $188,050
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-07-10 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10448368

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10448368, Diagnostic markers of language impairment in bilingual adults (5R21DC018916-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10448368. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*