The Impact of Bilingualism on the Executive Functions of Autistic Children: A Study of English-Arabic Children.
Speaking Arabic and English does not hurt—and may slightly help—sustained attention in autistic children.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sharaan et al. (2021) compared English-Arabic bilingual autistic kids with monolingual peers. They tested attention, switching, and working memory with kid-friendly computer games.
All children were 6-11 years old and spoke Arabic at home and English at school, or only English.
What they found
The bilingual group kept focus longer on a boring task. There was no difference on switching games or memory lists.
In plain words, two languages did not hurt and gave a tiny boost to staying on task.
How this fits with other research
Iarocci et al. (2017) saw the same small plus for bilingual-exposed autistic kids on parent-rated executive skills. The new study shows the plus holds when you test kids directly.
Northrup et al. (2022) also found fewer parent-reported behavior problems in dual-language youth, even when their single-language test scores looked lower. Together these three quasi-experiments line up: bilingualism does not harm and may lightly help.
Boxum et al. (2018) had already shown no language delay in bilingual toddlers with autism. Shereen et al. now push the good news up to older kids and into executive skills.
Why it matters
You can reassure families that keeping both home and community languages is safe and may even sharpen attention. When you write goals, ask about all languages the child hears and use them in naturalistic teaching. No need to push English-only routines.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
There is evidence to suggest that certain executive functions are impaired in autistic children, contributing to many daily challenges. Regular use of two languages has the potential to positively influence executive functions, though evidence is mixed. Little is known about the impact of bilingualism on the executive functions of autistic children, with only a handful of studies published worldwide to date. This study investigated the impact of bilingualism on sustained attention, interference control, flexible switching and working memory, in Arabic-English autistic children (n = 27) and their typically developing peers (n = 66), aged 5-12 years old. Groups were matched on age, nonverbal IQ and socioeconomic status, and completed a battery of computerized tests. Results showed an advantage for bilingual autistic children relative to their monolingual peers in sustained attention, and equivalent performance between bilingual and monolingual autistic children on all other executive functions. There were no generalized positive effects of bilingualism, and typically-developing children performed better than autistic children on all measures. The findings indicate that bilingualism does not negatively impact the executive function skills of autistic children, and that it might mitigate difficulties in sustained attention. LAY SUMMARY: Contrary to widespread belief, but in line with previous research, this study showed that speaking two languages did not harm thinking skills in autistic children. The thinking skills evaluated in this study included the ability to focus over a period of time, the ability to resist distractions, the ability to move back and forth between tasks, and the ability to use short-term memory. In fact, speaking two languages might help reduce difficulties that autistic children might face when focusing over a period of time.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2021 · doi:10.1002/aur.2439