An anomic aphasia patient who is a native Spanish speaker producing the word 'shoes' as [tʃuz] on a repetition task; which factor is most likely responsible?

• A. Semantic interference from the speaker's native language
• B. Phonological interference from the speaker's native language
• C. Semantic paraphasia due to the aphasia
• D. Phonemic paraphasia due to the aphasia

Answer: (B)

The situation highlights how bilingual speakers can experience interference between their languages at the phonological level. Repeating a word requires mapping its sound sequence into articulation, and in a native Spanish speaker producing an English word, the phonemes from Spanish can shape the output. The initial English sound /ʃ/ is not typical in Spanish, and the speaker ends up with /tʃ/ instead, giving [tʃuz]. That shows phonological interference from the native language affecting how the word is produced, not a failure to access the meaning or a random phoneme substitution caused by the aphasia itself. It’s not semantic misselection, and it’s more consistent with cross-language phonology influencing production during a repetition task.