Instructive feedback to expand listener skills in a second language in children with autism spectrum disorder

Three bilingual boys with autism learned English listener skills. During each trial the teacher gave Spanish instructive feedback. No extra Spanish teaching happened.

The team tracked whether the boys later understood the Spanish words without being asked to respond in Spanish.

All three boys picked up some Spanish. They got 12 out of 18 Spanish targets right without direct training.

The gains came from simply hearing Spanish feedback while they worked on English.

Loughrey et al. (2014) showed the same trick works for category names in one language. Jimenez-Gomez moved the idea across two languages.

van der Miesen et al. (2024) proved instructive feedback lasts two months. The new study adds bilingual transfer to that list of lasting benefits.

Zhou et al. (2024) taught foreign-language intraverbals through telehealth. Both papers teach a second language to kids with autism, but Zhou used live video and explicit intraverbal drills.

You can slip second-language words into your regular English DTT trials. No extra time, no new program. Just say the Spanish label once after the child responds. Kids with autism can pick up comprehension in both languages at once. Try it next time you run listener trials.