Saturday, May 19, 2012
Sheraton Hall (Sheraton Centre Toronto)
9:00 AM
P. Mirenda1, K. Ohashi
2, J. Petersen
3, S. Marinova-Todd
1, C. Hambly
4, E. Fombonne
5, P. Szatmari
6, S. E. Bryson
7, W. Roberts
8, I. M. Smith
7, T. Vaillancourt
9, J. Volden
10, L. Zwaigenbaum
10, S. Georgiades
6 and A. Thompson
6, (1)University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, (2)ABA Learning Centre, Richmond, BC, Canada, (3)Down Syndrome Research Foundation, Burnaby, BC, Canada, (4)McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, (5)Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, (6)Offord Centre for Child Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, (7)Dalhousie University/IWK Health Centre, Halifax, NS, Canada, (8)Autism Research Unit, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada, (9)University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada, (10)University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Background: Until recently, only a few unpublished studies have examined the effects of exposure to more than one language in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (e.g., Hambly & Fombonne, 2009; Leadbitter et al., 2009; Kremer-Sadlik, 2005; Yu, 2007). Perhaps because of this lack of research, bilingual families of children with ASD often decide to speak only one language to their child at home, or are advised to do so by a professional (Jordaan, 2008; Thordardottir, Weismer, & Smith, 1997). This practice stems from the belief that bilingual exposure will “overload” an already-impaired language system and will thus have a negative impact on overall language development. However, imposing a non-native language on a family can create social distance between family members and a child with a disability. In addition, many parents who speak a non-native language are not fluent themselves in that language, and thus provide models that are grammatically incorrect (Jacobson & Cairns, 2008). The end result is that parents who switch to speaking a non-native language to their child with ASD may adversely affect the child’s language development by talking less and by providing less accurate language models. Research in this area is needed in order to better understand the impact of bilingual exposure on children in this vulnerable population.
Objectives: Two studies were conducted to compare aspects of early language development in young children with ASD who were raised in monolingual and bilingual home environments in Canada.
Methods: In the first, exploratory study, lexical comprehension and production and overall language scores were compared in 14 English–Chinese bilingual and 14 English monolingual children with ASD (ages 43-73 months) who were matched by chronological age. In the second study, language scores were compared for 20 recently-diagnosed bilingual-exposed children with ASD and 40 monolingual-exposed children with ASD (ages 24-52 months). The two groups, which were matched with regard to chronological age and nonverbal IQ score, were compared with regard to the severity of children’s autism-related communication impairment, age of first words, and age of first phrases; receptive vocabulary scores; receptive and expressive language scores; and functional communication scores.
Results: Results of both studies indicated no statistically significant differences between the bilingual and monolingual groups on any of the language measures. Effect sizes (partial η2) were ≤.04 for all analyses. When the two languages of bilingual participants were compared in Study 1, no significant differences were found for either production vocabulary size or vocabulary comprehension scores.
Conclusions: There is no evidence that early bilingual exposure adds an additional burden to the developing language system of young children with ASD. This is positive news for the growing number of families in which more than one language is spoken and who may believe (or may be told) that they should restrict the use of their home language in order to simplify language input.
