Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A study of informativeness and definiteness

Language, theory of mind and cognitive skills in Arabic-speaking children with and without autism: Evidence from network and cluster analyses

INTRODUCTION

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social interactions, social communication, and repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior. Previous studies have reported mixed findings regarding the links between language (i.e., phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, and pragmatics), theory of mind (ToM), executive functions (EFs), and central coherence measures in children with ASD.

METHODS

A total of 163 Palestinian-Arabic-speaking children aged 4-11 participated: 76 with ASD and 87 with typical language development (TLD). The children`s phonological, morphosyntactic, lexical, and pragmatic skills, along with verbal and non-verbal ToM abilities were evaluated. Additionally, cognitive assessments included non-verbal IQ, EF, and central coherence processing.

RESULTS

Group-level results showed that children with ASD scored lower than their TLD peers in all measures. Network analysis revealed robust interconnections between language, ToM, and cognitive skills in both groups. In autistic children, language was a central node, with pragmatics prevailing over morphosyntax and lexicon, while age was central in the TLD group. Cluster analysis identified four language clusters within the ASD group, demonstrating dissociations between language domains: (1) high performance across all domains, (2) moderate performance in phonology and morphosyntax with low pragmatic abilities, (3) moderate performance in phonology and lexicon with low morphosyntax and pragmatics, and (4) moderate phonology and lexicon with extremely poor morphosyntax and pragmatics. Autistic children with enhanced language abilities performed better in verbal and non-verbal ToM and EF tasks.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings underscore the variability in language, ToM, and cognitive profiles of autistic children, showing dissociation within and between different domains in some autistic children. These results offer insights for applied interventions.

Disfluencies as a Window into Pragmatic Skills in Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

There is little research on the production of speech disfluencies such as silent pauses, repetitions, self-corrections, and filled pauses (e.g., eh, em) in monolingual autistic children, and there is no data on this crucial part of speech production in bilingual autistic children. This study aims to address this gap by examining disfluency production in bilingual autistic and non-autistic children across two linguistically distinct languages, HL-Russian (the home language) and SL-Hebrew (the societal language). Fifty-one bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking autistic and non-autistic children aged 5-9 (autistic: n = 21; non-autistic: n = 30), matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, participated in picture-based story-generation tasks (LITMUS MAIN, Gagarina et al., ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 63:1-36, 2019). Audio recordings of narrative samples were transcribed, coded, and scored for eleven disfluency types using CLAN tools. The non-autistic group produced higher overall disfluency rate than the autistic group. The autistic group exhibited fewer filled and silent pauses than the non-autistic group in HL-Russian. Furthermore, non-autistic children manifested varied distribution of disfluency types across languages, while autistic children displayed more consistent patterns across languages. In summary, we replicated findings from previous research on monolinguals only partly, as no between-group difference in filled pauses was found in SL-Hebrew. Additionally, bilingual autistic children exhibited language-universal patterns of disfluency production, whereas their non-autistic peers displayed language-specific patterns.

Bilingual exposure might enhance L1 development in Cantonese-English bilingual autistic children: Evidence from the production of focus

LAY ABSTRACT

It is commonly believed among professionals and parents that exposure to two languages imposes an additional burden on children with autism spectrum disorder. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support or reject this belief. With the prevalence of autism and an increasing number of children growing up bilingual, it is urgent to understand how bilingual exposure interacts with autism. Bilingual autistic children from Hong Kong, with Cantonese as their first language and English as their second language, took part in the study. We used a production game to test how bilingual autistic children use different levels of linguistic knowledge to produce contrastive information in real conversations, compared to their monolingual autistic peers and typically developing children matched in language abilities, nonverbal IQ, working memory and maternal education. We found that bilingual autistic children performed as good as typically developing children in general, and they even performed better than monolingual autistic children. Our findings suggest a bilingual advantage in autistic children in conveying constative information in sentences. We thus encourage parents to engage their children in rich bilingual environments. Clinicians, educators and other professionals may also consider adding bilingual aspects in training programmes to support families raising bilingual autistic children.

Language and communication skills in multilingual children on the autism spectrum: A systematic review

LAY ABSTRACT

Both parents and service providers have voiced concerns about the potential negative impact of exposure to multiple languages on the language and communication skills of autistic children. The current literature review summarized research that assessed the language and communication skills of multilingual autistic children in comparison with their autistic and nonautistic peers. After a comprehensive search, 22 relevant publications were identified that met the inclusion criteria of the current review. Thirteen studies used both direct (directly administered screening/diagnostic tools) and indirect language assessments (e.g. parent questionnaires). Receptive and expressive vocabulary was the most frequently assessed language skill. Available research does not support the assumption that bilingualism has negative effects on the language and communication skills of autistic children. The language and communication skills of multilingual autistic children frequently resembled their monolingual autistic peers in both strengths and areas of growth. Preliminary findings indicate that multilingual autistic children may share some advantages of multilingualism with their multilingual nonautistic peers. Studies often excluded participants with intellectual disabilities or complex communication needs, which means that a large population of autistic children is not yet represented in research about the effects of multilingualism.

Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions

This article reviews the current knowledge state on pragmatic and structural language abilities in autism and their potential relation to extralinguistic abilities and autistic traits. The focus is on questions regarding autism language profiles with varying degrees of (selective) impairment and with respect to potential comorbidity of autism and language impairment: Is language impairment in autism the co-occurrence of two distinct conditions (comorbidity), a consequence of autism itself (no comorbidity), or one possible combination from a series of neurodevelopmental properties (dimensional approach)? As for language profiles in autism, three main groups are identified, namely, (i) verbal autistic individuals without structural language impairment, (ii) verbal autistic individuals with structural language impairment, and (iii) minimally verbal autistic individuals. However, this tripartite distinction hides enormous linguistic heterogeneity. Regarding the nature of language impairment in autism, there is currently no model of how language difficulties may interact with autism characteristics and with various extralinguistic cognitive abilities. Building such a model requires carefully designed explorations that address specific aspects of language and extralinguistic cognition. This should lead to a fundamental increase in our understanding of language impairment in autism, thereby paving the way for a substantial contribution to the question of how to best characterize neurodevelopmental disorders.