Bringing together autism and bilingualism research: Language matters

Please note this paper has been published ahead of print in Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism: Digard, B. G., & Sorace, A. (2021). Bringing together autism and bilingualism research: Language matters. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.21071.digPlease do not cite this preprint. - (Commentary to keynote by Philippe Prevost and Laurice Tuller, “Bilingual language development in autism”)

Bilingual language development in autism

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.

Bilingual language development in infancy: What can we do to support bilingual families?

Many infants and children around the world grow up exposed to two or more languages. Their success in learning each of their languages is a direct consequence of the quantity and quality of their everyday language experience, including at home, in daycare and preschools, and in the broader community context. Here, we discuss how research on early language learning can inform policies that promote successful bilingual development across the varied contexts in which infants and children live and learn. Throughout our discussions, we highlight that each individual child’s experience is unique. In fact, it seems that there are as many ways to grow up bilingual as there are bilingual children. To promote successful bilingual development, we need policies that acknowledge this variability and support frequent exposure to high-quality experience in each of a child’s languages.

Interdependence between L1 and L2: The case of Syrian children with refugee backgrounds in Canada and the Netherlands

Children who are refugees become bilingual in circumstances that are often challenging and that can vary across national contexts. We investigated the second language (L2) syntactic skills of Syrian children aged 6-12 living in Canada (n = 56) and the Netherlands (n = 47). Our goal was to establish the impact of the first language (L1 = Syrian Arabic) skills on L2 (English, Dutch) outcomes and whether L1–L2 interdependence is influenced by the length of L2 exposure. To measure L1 and L2 syntactic skills, cross-linguistic Litmus Sentence Repetition Tasks (Litmus-SRTs) were used. Results showed evidence of L1–L2 interdependence, but interdependence may only surface after sufficient L2 exposure. Maternal education level and refugee camp experiences differed between the two samples. Both variables impacted L2 outcomes in the Canadian but not in the Dutch sample, demonstrating the importance to examine refugee children’s bilingual language development in different national contexts.

Properties of child-directed speech in bilingual parents

How parents talk to young children matters to language and cognitive development. In the early years the quantity, quality, and diversity inherent in language from parents in the home predict differences in vocabulary knowledge, school readiness, and later academic achievement. However, most of what is known about child-directed speech (CDS) comes from studies of monolingual parents, and little is known about features of speech from bilingual parents. Here, we asked whether degree of bilingualism assessed within a single parent might be positively associated with CDS features that are known to facilitate children’s lexical and grammatical structures across languages – parental partial repetitions. During unscripted narrations (n = 91) of a picture book to their toddlers in English, mothers who reported being more bilingually balanced used a higher proportion of self-repetitions (both single words and 2-word combinations) within a brief time-frame. At the same time, more bilingual mothers preserved the same degree of lexical diversity as more monolingual mothers. The results obtained even accounting for differences in socio-economic status. These findings are discussed in terms of adaptive strategies that bilingual parents may consciously or unconsciously adopt in bilingual language development

Emergent Literacy in Bilingual Children

The objective of the article is to (1) explain the role of emergent literacy in the community language in developing literacy in the additional language and biliteracy, and (2) demonstrate the need to develop resources supporting emergent reading skills in community languages in Australia. A critical review of literature in the field of emergent literacy and bilingual language development shows that the interaction between languages in the development of biliteracy is complex, but overall it demonstrates a positive impact of emergent literacy in the community language on the development of literacy skills in the additional language in later years. The article presents emergent literacy example materials, targeting bilingual children in Australia with Polish backgrounds, and explains the design considerations underpinning their development. A particular emphasis is on explaining how the materials have been designed to (1) stress the presence of different cultures and languages in the children’s environment (2) teach how to transfer reading skills and behaviours from Polish into English, and (3) emphasise those specific grapheme-phoneme relations in Polish which present difficulties for children acquiring Polish and English. The authors conclude that opportunities for transfer of early reading skills and behaviours from a community language to an additional language can be enhanced by designing reading materials for positive transfer, because learners who are acquiring an additional language use the strategies which they find most useful in their first language. It may be equally important to develop reading materials and instruction in the mainstream language in a way that community-language-speaking children are able to draw upon the skills which they bring with them into the reading learning process at school from home.