1. Introduction
In the United States, nearly a quarter of children live in a bilingual family environment. Since early exposure to multiple languages to communicate is a big challenge for most children with autism, many parents choose to use one language for education. Although using only one language seems to be conducive to the communication and learning of children with autism, if children do not master the mainstream language as much as their mother tongue, it will cause parents and children with autism to lack communication and interaction due to insufficient fluency. The development of social communication skills of autistic children has an adverse effect. In addition, insufficient mother tongue fluency will also affect children's cultural identity and social communication skills.
Nowadays, more and more bilingual learners (DLLs) are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at an early stage. Although there is a lack of evidence that bilingual learning has a negative impact on the language development of autistic patients, many families are still advised not to use bilingualism to educate children with autism. Studies have found that bilingual normal children have certain advantages in terms of executive function and social skills development, but there are few studies on the related effects of autism.
1.1 Cognitive advantages brought by bilingual learning
executive function is a broad and complex cognitive function domain, including attention control, working memory, impulse control, cognitive and behavioral flexibility, etc. Bilingual masters perform better than their monolingual peers in a series of specific skill information reports and related tasks, especially in cognitive flexibility and attention control. At the same time, the increase in attention control and cognitive flexibility of bilingual masters leads to an increase in their communication sensitivity, which is conducive to the improvement of their social skills.
Although the advantages of bilingualism have been extensively studied in ordinary children and adults, the relevant research on people with neurodevelopmental disorders has yet to be perfected.
1.2 executive function and autism
executive function and social skills are the areas that have received much attention in the field of autism research. Although executive dysfunction is not the core problem of autism, studies have found that executive dysfunction is a widespread problem in autism. In addition, some researchers have found that executive dysfunction is related to other symptoms of autism (such as stereotyped behavior).
1.3 Bilingual mastery and autism
Bilingual contact and autism related research mainly focus on language development. Based on previous studies, this article puts forward the hypothesis: Compared with monolingual patients in autism, the parents of bilingual patients report fewer executive dysfunctions, and they also have advantages in social communication skills for parental reporting and clinical evaluation.
2. Research methods All evaluations in the
program are completed by a multidisciplinary team composed of practicing clinical psychologists and committee-certified pediatricians. All clinicians have received advanced training and have professional knowledge reserves in autism; the diagnosis of ASD is carried out by experienced clinicians using the fifth edition of the Mental Disorder Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
2.1 Subjects
This study identified subjects from more than 2,000 clinical samples of autistic patients. Each parent filled out a questionnaire and was interviewed, indicating what language the child was exposed to at home and the percentage of time each language used. This study requires that the bilingual (DLL) children's group has no less than 10% of the second language in daily contact. Statistics from
show that the subjects are children with an average age of 4.73 who are in the early stage of language development. There are 24 bilingual (DLL) subjects and 31 monolingual subjects.
2.2 Measurement method
All subjects were diagnosed through the Autism Diagnosis Observation Form (ADOS-2). ADOS-2 is a game-based assessment tool for social skills and autism characteristics. It is well-trained Of clinicians as the test subjects. There are five different modules in ADOS-2. The main tester decides which module to use according to the age and language skills of the subjects. At the end, the examiner scored the children's behavior during the test, where 0 means no obstacle, 1 means mild obstacle, and 2 to 3 means severe obstacle. The final generated ADOS-2 Comparison Score (Comparison Score) represents the level of autism symptoms that the child showed during the ADOS-2 test on a scale of 1-10.
Parents of all families report the subjects’ autism symptoms, adaptability and executive functionQuestions, the scales used are: Social Responsiveness Scale-Preschool Version (SRS2-P); Caregiver Rating Scale in Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale Second Edition (Vineland-II); Executive Function Behavior Rating Scale- Preschool version (BRIEF-P).
3. Conclusion
3.1
According to the Executive Function Behavior Rating Scale-Preschool Version (BRIEF-P), it can be seen that the parents of DLL children report lower scores on the three dimensions of Inhibit, Shift, and GEC, that is In terms of inhibitory self-control, cognitive flexibility, and overall executive ability, DLL children perform better than monolingual children.
3.2
In SRS2-P, the parents of DLL children also reported lower scores on social interaction and interaction, and stereotyped behavior issues.
3.3
According to the results of the analysis of variance, language contact has no main effect on the severity of clinical symptoms, and there is no interaction effect with gender. In other words, the evaluation scores of autism symptoms exhibited by DLL children and monolingual children during the ADOS-2 test are almost the same.
4. Discussion
The current results support the findings of previous studies, that is, exposure to multiple languages will not negatively affect the communication of children with autism. The researchers evaluated the differences in executive function and social skills between bilingual and monolingual autism patients, and the results showed that bilingual autism patients had significantly fewer executive function and stereotyped behavior problems than monolingual autism patients. In addition, this study investigates the impact of bilingual exposure on the executive function of children with autism for the first time, and believes that the advantages of bilingual learning in executive function may extend to other neurodevelopmental problems in children.
5. The author's perception
With the development of world integration and cultural globalization, more and more children begin to live in a multilingual environment. Blindly following the mainstream language and giving up using their mother tongue will be detrimental to individual identity and social interaction , And not touching the mainstream social language is not conducive to the development of children’s social skills. Therefore, we need to find a balance and learn to use mainstream social languages on the basis of proficient use of mother tongue.
References:
Ratto, Potvin, Pallathra & Kenworthy(2020). Parents report fewer executive functioning problems and repetitive behaviors in young dual-language speakers with autism. 26(7), 917-933.
Author | Liang Yuan Lai Yifei
editor | Lai Yifei
review | Niu Weimei Ma Xuanmeng
