Extending functional communication training to multiple language contexts in bilingual learners with challenging behavior
Train mands in both home languages and add repair steps to keep bilingual kids with autism from falling back to problem behavior.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with three bilingual kids with autism. All spoke English and Spanish at home.
Each child had severe problem behavior like hitting or screaming when they wanted something.
First the kids got regular FCT in only English. When that failed, the team added Spanish mands and taught repair steps when adults did not answer right away.
What they found
Single-language FCT did not work. Problem behavior stayed high and kids only used English mands.
After adding Spanish mands plus repair training, all three kids asked for items in both languages.
Challenging behavior dropped to near zero and stayed low even when new adults entered the room.
How this fits with other research
Martin et al. (1997) showed FCT can last over two years in family homes. Banerjee adds bilingual homes to that list.
Torres-Viso et al. (2018) used FCT for mands about moving objects. Banerjee uses the same core steps but for two languages, making it a close cousin study.
Romo et al. (2025) found the best language order for teaching labels varied by child. Banerjee agrees: one child learned Spanish mands faster, another learned English faster.
Why it matters
If you serve bilingual families, teach the mand in both languages from day one. Add quick repair steps like louder or clearer speech when the first try fails. This small tweak stops problem behavior from coming back and respects the child’s full language world.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Little research has highlighted how evidence-based practices (e.g., functional communication training [FCT]) might be adapted for bilingual learners with disabilities. In the current study, we served 2 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and challenging behavior whose parents primarily spoke Spanish at home, and whose teachers primarily spoke English at school. Following traditional FCT (i.e., 1 language only), we systematically replicated the findings of Neely, Graber et al. (2020) by demonstrating that mands in the untrained language (i.e., English) did not emerge when trained mands (i.e., Spanish) contacted extinction in alternative-language contexts. Simultaneously, challenging behavior consistently resurged. After children received explicit training with both languages and were taught to change the language of request when initial attempts were unsuccessful (i.e., "repair the message" training), these same children successfully obtained high rates of reinforcement in both language contexts, and challenging behavior rarely occurred.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2022 · doi:10.1002/jaba.883