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Article published In:
Epistemological issue: Bilingual Language Development in Autism
Edited by Cristina Flores and Neal Snape
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 12:1] 2022
► pp. 1–32
Epistemological paper

Bilingual language development in autism

ORCID logo | UMR 1253 iBrain, University of Tours, Inserm, Tours , France
ORCID logo | UMR 1253 iBrain, University of Tours, Inserm, Tours , France

Bilingual language development in children with autism is a new field; the entire body of literature, which is so far sparse, has been published within the last ten years. The potential impact of this research is, however, very high, due to increasing numbers of children growing up bilingually in many countries crossed with the rising number of children being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Parents and practitioners need guidelines with solid empirical foundations which could provide the base for answering questions about language practices. Overall, no detrimental effects of bilingualism have so far been reported for either language development or characteristics related to autism. Based on a scoping review, this paper assesses these findings and addresses what current knowledge allows us to conclude about bilingual language development in autism. It is suggested that while recent studies are posing more sophisticated research questions and using more appropriate tools, remaining issues, notably related to how variables related to autism and to bilingualism are taken into account, render clarity on this research topic elusive at this point. It is argued that future studies should directly take up the challenge of addressing diversity in both ASD and in bilingualism, and their intersection.

Keywords: autism, bilingualism, language, heterogeneity, cognition
Article outline
  • 1.Autism in bilingualism and bilingualism in autism: Why does it matter?
    • 1.1Unusual bilingual acquisition does occur in autism
    • 1.2What is autism and why might we expect bilingualism in autism to be different?
    • 1.3Objectives of this paper
  • 2.Investigating language development in ASD
    • 2.1Population sampling
    • 2.2Measuring language
  • 3.Investigating language in bilingual children with(out) language impairment
    • 3.1Characterizing bilingual experience
    • 3.2Bilinguals with language impairment
  • 4.Applying insights from autism and bilingualism research to investigation of bilingual language development in ASD
    • 4.1Overall summary of conclusions reached in the literature on bilingual language acquisition in children with ASD
    • 4.2Integration of research practice on language in autism into Bi-ASD research
      • 4.2.1Age, language milestones, and language trajectories
      • 4.2.2Language impairment
      • 4.2.3IQ
      • 4.2.4Autism symptomatology
      • 4.2.5Comparison groups
      • 4.2.6Language measures
    • 4.3Integration of research practice on child bilingualism with and without LI into Bi-ASD research
      • 4.3.1Characterization of “bilingual”
      • 4.3.2Operationalization of bilingualism variables
      • 4.3.3Identification of language impairment in bilinguals
    • 4.4Does bilingualism affect nonlinguistic cognition in children with ASD?
      • 4.4.1EF and ToM in TD bilingual children and in monolingual children with ASD
      • 4.4.2Bilingualism effects on EF, ToM and autism severity in bilingual children with ASD
  • 5.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.21018.pre
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