Brief report: An exploratory study of lexical skills in bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder.
Bilingual preschoolers with autism keep pace with monolingual peers on vocabulary—support families’ language choices.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Griffith et al. (2012) compared bilingual and monolingual preschoolers with autism. All kids spoke English and Chinese at home. The team gave simple picture-vocabulary tests to see who knew more words.
They used a case-control design. Each bilingual child was paired with a monolingual child of the same age.
What they found
Bilingual and monolingual preschoolers with autism scored the same on most language tests. Knowing two languages did not slow word learning.
The study found no sign that bilingual exposure harms early vocabulary.
How this fits with other research
Cappadocia et al. (2012) ran a near-copy study the same year and got the same null result. Both papers tell clinicians: relax, bilingual homes are safe.
Giesbers et al. (2020) and Mas et al. (2019) later asked the same question in older, school-aged kids. They still found no language delay, showing the preschool finding holds up over time.
Skrimpa et al. (2022) looked deeper and saw a tiny plus: bilingual autistic preschoolers actually solved pronoun tasks slightly better. The early null result is therefore not a ceiling—bilingualism might quietly help, not hurt.
Why it matters
You can stop advising families to drop a language. Keep coaching parents in whatever language feels natural at home. Use both languages in sessions if that mirrors the child’s world. This choice costs nothing and may even aid social understanding.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Studying lexical diversity in bilingual children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can contribute important information to our understanding of language development in this diverse population. In this exploratory study, lexical comprehension and production and overall language skills were investigated in 14 English-Chinese bilingual and 14 English monolingual preschool-age children with ASD. Results indicated that both groups had equivalent scores on all but one measure of language and vocabulary, including English production vocabulary, conceptual production vocabulary, and vocabulary comprehension. When comparing the two languages of bilingual participants, there were no significant differences in production vocabulary size or vocabulary comprehension scores. The results provide evidence that bilingual English-Chinese preschool-age children with ASD have the capacity to function successfully as bilinguals.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2012 · doi:10.1007/s10803-011-1366-y