Abstract:
This literature review focuses on the history and pertinent research on bilingualism in autistic children. It also discusses on whether language development is hindered in any way due to being bilingual. Autism is a brain development disorder characterised by social impairment communication difficulties and ritualistic behaviour. Some early researchers argued that language problems are down to social motivation deficits and that phonological and syntactical aspects remain intact (Jordan, 1993).
Parents’ opinion on bilingualism in autistic children:
A researcher, Yu (2013) showed that among 15 Chinese-English bilingual parents, most stopped talking in Chinese to their children as they wished to not confused or prolong their speech delay. It was concluded that participants in the study found bilingualism too challenging. Furthermore, code-switching and mixing languages were also found.
Similarly; Bird, Lamond and Holden (2011) discovered that French-English bilingual parents felt afraid to speak a non-English language to their children. Kremer-Sadlik (2005) showed that parents decided to raise their children only learning English because they believed having dual languages would hinder a child’s development.
Peterson et al. (2012) found that the belief that bilingualism was ‘too difficult’ had led to detrimental outcomes for autistic children from bilingual children. Furthermore, Hambly and Fombonne (2011) theorised that the social impairment characteristics of Autism could cause further language delays in bilingually-exposed children compared to monolingually-exposed children with Autism.
Hambly and Fombonne proposed to investigate whether the delays would appear in expressive vocabulary, lower levels of language comprehension and production as well as later onset of early language milestone for bilingually-exposed children with ASD. Results of this study indicated no language delays associated with bilingual exposure for children with autism.
To summarise, the studies have found that parents’ perspective on bilingualism among children with autism was one of fear. This arose from worries that children with autism would become too perplexed.
Clinical opinions:
Numerous articles suggest that Speech and language pathologists have the same opinion that bilingual language exposure should be avoided among children diagnosed with autism. If the extra complexity and demands of bilingualism was removed, this would in turn lighten the pressure on the child. For example, Kremer-Sadlik (2005) found that all parents participating in the study were reported to have received professional recommendations to speak to their children in only English, regardless of how well they speak it.
Hambly and Fombonne (2011) compared the social and language abilities of 75 children with autism categorised into three groups: ‘Monolingually exposed’, ‘bilingually exposed before 12 months of age’ and ‘bilingually exposed after 12 months of age’. The abilities that were assessed across the three groups included social responsiveness, initiating of pointing, response to pointing and attention to voice, among others. They found that bilingually exposed children with autism did not show additional delays, in comparison to monolingually exposed. They concluded that parents should not be discouraged from continuing to speak to their children in two languages. Yu (2013) stated that the absence of bilingualism is damaging to language development in children.
Fahim and Nedwich (2014) found that clinicians recommended bilingual parents discontinue bilingual language exposure if a child was diagnosed with autism. They concluded that the disadvantages of limiting children with autism to input from a single language would outweigh the advantages.
Researcher’s opinions on bilingualism among children with Autism:
Further research by leading researchers shows a contrast to parent’s and clinicians opinions regarding bilingualism in autistic children. Most researchers found that bilingualism was not damaging to children with autism. Kremer-Saklik (2005) states that developing bilingual abilities in children with autism is essential for the facilitation of communication with bilingual parents and the increased opportunity for social interaction in and outside of the family home.
Petersen et al. (2012) compared the language abilities of 14 monolingual, English-speaking children with autism in comparison to 14 bilingual English-Chinese speaking children with autism of the same age. They found that bilingual children with autism had a larger production vocabulary and no noteworthy differences in the size of their theoretical vocabulary or English vocabulary in comparison to monolingual children. They further concluded that children with autism had the potential to be bilingual without experiencing disadvtanged in their language development.
Valiceneti-McDermott et al. (2012) found that bilingual toddlers with autism cooed more often than monolinguals. They further found that bilingual groups showed increased pointing. Fahim and Nedwick (2014) claimed it was not advantageous to limit a bilingually exposed child with autism to input from a single language. They further argued that the home is an ideal place to teach functional communication and that parents should not limit their interactions with autistic children to just English language.
Conclusion:
This review has focused on a lack of a literature related to bilingualism and autism. It shows that only more recently in the early 2010s that more studies have arisen. One major conclusion that can be drawn from the studies is that they do have some limitations. Most particularly is that they only focus on qualitative methodology through observation and interviews which led to what one could define as ‘one-sided’ data. More quantitative research is needed.
Secondly, the studies all seem to categorise autistic children on the same ‘level’ showing no distinction between mild to severe. Which would be helpful when focusing on the results of how well an autistic child may adopt another language.
One area for further research would be to focus on studies regarding the effectiveness of subjecting children with different levels of autism to bilingualism as well as more in-depth research on Speech Language Pathologists perspectives on bilingual children with autism.