Semester Award Granted

Spring 2025

Submission Date

May 2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Monica Rosselli

Abstract

Individuals who can speak more than one language may score lower than monolinguals on verbal naming tasks. The Multilingual Naming Task (MINT) is a 32-item assessment that is used at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in the USA. This study looks at the impact of monolingualism and bilingualism on language abilities over three years in three clinical groups (cognitively normal, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia), using the MINT as a measure. The results show that bilingual individuals perform worse on the MINT than monolinguals at each time point, after controlling for demographic factors; however, there is no difference between language groups and decline of MINT scores. These results indicate bilingualism negatively affects naming performance on verbal tasks; however, since the MINT can be biased, that could also be the case here. Further research is needed to determine if bilingualism has an increased adverse impact on verbal task abilities with age and if the MINT is biased against bilingual individuals.

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