Key Findings
What did we learn?
After studying more than 500 autistic and non-autistic children, speaking multiple languages across several countries, we found a clear and consistent message:
Bilingualism is never harmful. It is even an asset.
Does bilingualism confuse autistic children?
Families with an autistic child often worry that bilingualism might pose additional challenges to their development.
Bilingualism never had a negative influence on cognition or communication, in either non-autistic or autistic children.
Cognitive Development
We explored how multilingualism relates to three key areas of children's cognitive and communicative development.
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Executive Functions
Executive functions are the mental processes that help us plan, focus attention, block irrelevant information, and switch between tasks.
Our research found that bilingual children performed better than their monolingual peers on working memory and attention-related tasks, including autistic children.
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Theory of Mind
Theory of Mind is the ability to understand that other people may have different perspectives, desires, knowledge, and beliefs.
Our findings showed that bilingualism can support Theory of Mind development, particularly in autistic children who are highly proficient in their second language and receive rich language input.
Communication & Language Development
Communication skills include understanding gestures, thinking about language, and telling coherent stories.
Our research suggests that multilingual experiences can support several aspects of communication and language development, including gesture understanding, storytelling, and metalinguistic awareness.
Interested in learning more?
Explore our educational videos and publications to discover the research behind these findings.