Dual-Language Communication and Social-Cognitive Skills in Bilingual Children with ASD

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Slightly over 1 in 5 children in the United States are growing up in a household that speaks a language other than English. For these children, developing bilingual skills will allow them to communicate both with family members who have limited English skills and with English-speaking teachers and peers. However, for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is limited research about how to facilitate their bilingual development. Professionals and parents have often assumed that learning two languages would be too challenging, especially for children with minimal spoken language skills. While several studies over the past decade have demonstrated that bilingual exposure is not detrimental for language development in children with ASD, these studies have focused mostly on the acquisition of English rather than examining factors that promote development of both languages. Furthermore, bilingual studies have generally excluded children with minimal/low verbal skills. The proposed sequential mixed-methods project places a new emphasis on variability within the bilingual experiences of children with ASD and their families. It seeks to identify factors associated with children’s skills in both languages, as well as their social-cognitive skills such as perspective- taking and cognitive flexibility. The quantitative phase will include 60 Spanish-speaking families with children with ASD (ages 4-6), including children who are minimally verbal. The first aim is to characterize sources of variation in the types of bilingual language environments experienced by children with ASD (e.g., different languages from caregivers vs. therapists; different languages from different caregivers; code-switching by bilingual caregivers; changes in language choices over time). The second aim is to examine predictors of children’s dual-language communication and social-cognitive skills, including the role of quantity and contexts of Spanish exposure. In a qualitative phase conducted with a subset of 30 families, the third aim is to interpret the quantitative findings in reference to family perspectives, priorities, experiences, and challenges with language choices and support services. The long-term goal of this work is to collaborate with families and service providers to develop interventions that support bilingual families and promote the linguistic and social- cognitive development of children across the autism spectrum. This career development proposal includes an expert team of mentors from Psychology, Communication Disorders, and Public Health. The training goals focus on conducting research with minimally verbal children with ASD, mixed methods, and using community- based participatory research to develop and evaluate interventions. The research aims and training goals of this career development award reflect current priorities in the strategic plan of the NIDCD for Voice, Speech, and Language, including Improving Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention in Understudied Populations (Priority Area 3) and Improving Outcomes for Human Communication through community-based research (Priority Area 4).