Autism and Bilingualism
A tale of two spectra
Once upon a time, there was a fair and plucky maiden. Her name is Jill Petersen, and she is a former graduate student of mine. She had taken my course on bilingual language development. She had just completed her first clinical placement too. One crisp day in early spring, she barged into my office.
“I observed a clinician make a recommendation to the parents of an autistic child to raise him as a monolingual,” she announced. “It’s exactly the opposite of what you taught us. I want to do the research.” Her words were music to my ears. I reclined in my chair in tingling anticipation of the symphony that was about to unfold.
This episode happened just over ten years ago. At the time, there were exactly zero published studies on bilingual children who were also autistic. As a result, the recommendations the clinicians were making were based on gut feelings, assumptions, casual personal observations. And who could blame them?
But spunky and keen Jill was ready to plow right into this uncultivated field. It was vast and overwhelming, and it was unclear where to even begin. But it also gave her the freedom to start wherever she liked. Any research evidence at the time was welcome. And Jill rolled up her sleeves and began her research under my supervision. She ultimately completed a master’s thesis, which we turned into a journal article. The paper was one of the first two published papers on bilingual children with autism. Not a small feat . . . for both of us!
At the cross-roads of two spectra
High-quality research that applies to a large swath of the population requires researchers to group participants together for easy comparisons. However, there is a challenge when grouping autistic children who are also bilingual. By nature, their language skills range over two spectra.
There is a wide variability in the language abilities of autistic individuals; spanning from those who communicate freely and effectively to those who do not speak at all. Similarly, there is a huge variation in the language proficiency in each language of bilingual people. It spans from having proficiency in one language (i.e., monolinguals), to those who are fluent in both of their languages to the same degree (see my earlier post on balanced bilinguals). It is extremely difficult to find children who are matched on language abilities, and also speak the same language combinations and to the same degree of proficiency. As a result, research on this population takes time and patience. It requires numerous studies that repeat their findings in order to confirm the results on a larger scale.
During the past decade, the scientific evidence has been steadily accumulating. Now we can confidently assert that autistic individuals, both children and adults, are capable of becoming bilingual. As is the case with neurotypical children, exposure to an additional language does not harm autistic children. Imposing monolingualism does not do them any good, and it could even hurt them.
Autistic children are capable of becoming bilingual (considerable evidence)
Not that long ago, on the scale of things, people assumed that bilingualism was harmful to anyone, including neurotypical children. It is hard to believe it now, but it was true. Two Canadian researchers, Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert, published a seminal paper in 1962. It was the first research study to show that bilingualism was not harmful but actually beneficial for typically-developing children. Since then, a copious amount of research evidence has confirmed Peal and Lambert’s original findings. I don’t believe that there is anyone today who would argue that bilingualism is problematic for neurotypical children.
It is mind-boggling that children who are neurodivergent or have language delay are still not sufficiently supported on their path to becoming bilingual. People readily assume that children who struggle with one language will do so even more with two.
Fortunately, the research evidence gathered over the past ten years convincingly shows that autistic children have the capacity to become bilingual. These studies usually compared bilingual children with autism to monolingual children who were autistic. They examined various aspects of the children’s language development. The results have consistently shown that bilingual children develop the same language abilities as monolingual children with autism. Both groups of children:
- Reach the same language milestones at the same age
- They have equivalent vocabulary sizes. This means that they know, on average, the same number of words. That was true in terms of the words they understand and the words that they can say
- Have similar knowledge of early grammar, or how to make well-formed simple sentences
- Are similar in their ability to connect and communicate with people effectively
- Have similar executive function abilities. The completion of any goal-oriented activity requires these skills, such as:
- Planning—scheduling our day, or making a to-do list,
- Mental flexibility—being able to juggle both the coffee pot and the frying pen in the morning when making breakfast, while keeping one from overboiling and the other one from burning,
- Inhibitory control—ignoring the constantly buzzing cell phone in order to eat our breakfast in peace
- Memory—remembering what we had for breakfast in order to assure that our lunch provides us with complementary nutrients
As you can see, on all of these daily activities, bilingual children with autism are similar to monolingual children. Therefore, we now know that exposing autistic individuals to more than one language is not harmful . They can function just as well in two languages as in one.
Autistic children may benefit from being bilingual (limited evidence)
Bilingual individuals are not only equivalent to monolinguals, but in some areas, they may even experience some benefits from speaking more than one language. I’ve devoted a later post to this topic. Here I will focus on recent research conducted with autistic children, especially in the areas of executive functioning.
The research in this area is still new, and the evidence so far is limited. Early findings suggest that bilingual children with autism tend to perform better than their monolingual peers on some executive functions. They are better at inhibitory control and are more flexible at switching their attention. However, researchers have found no advantages on working memory tasks, such a repeating a series of numbers. To date, most of the information comes from single studies that are typically done with a small number of children. While the findings are promising, we need more of these types of studies in order to be more confident that the bilingual advantages are indeed present in autistic children too.
Imposing monolingualism is not helpful to autistic children (convincing evidence)
As shown above, we can be confident that bilingual children with autism are able to handle two languages. They may even experience some benefits from being bilingual. However, immigrant families, especially those that speak a language other than English at home, are still advised to speak only one language to their children. As a result, the family usually switches to speaking English at home. However, this s often the weaker language for the parents as they are learning it themselves. Interviews with these parents have revealed some of the challenges that they face:
- Most parents value early intervention for their children. But they also note that only few, if any, of the services are available in their native language
- Many parents reported that they were not comfortable speaking English and found it challenging to do so with their children
- They expressed feelings of sadness and personal loss from not being able to talk to their child in their native language.
- Parents who felt inadequate in their English proficiency, felt distanced from their autistic children:
- The parents spoke less to their children
- Engaged their children less in conversations in general
- The parents were unable to model language that was grammatically correct and pragmatically relevant
- As a result, their children were deprived of exposure to rich and varied language. But this type of language is necessary for the development of better speaking skills in children with autism, whether bilingual or monolingual
Based on these informative and sometimes poignant reports, it is very clear that imposed monolingualism can cause far more harm than good, especially in the context of families that are already bilingual. Thus, it is to be avoided!
All children benefit from exposure to a language that is rich in words, varied in grammatical complexity, and reflects their culture. They also need to see examples of how to use the language appropriately, when and how to be polite, formal, or direct. The goal of pediatricians, speech-language pathologists, special education teachers, behavioural therapists, classroom teachers, physiotherapists, parents, siblings, community leaders, and friends, should be to provide these language opportunities to children in the strongest language that they speak themselves. So that the children can live happily ever after!