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Part of
Bilingualism, Executive Function, and Beyond: Questions and insights
Edited by Irina A. Sekerina, Lauren Spradlin and Virginia Valian
[Studies in Bilingualism 57] 2019
► pp. 337–353

Chapter 20
Proficient bilingualism may alleviate some executive function difficulties in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

| McGill University

A bilingual advantage, or enhanced performance on executive function (EF) tasks, has been identified in typically-developing bilingual children relative to monolinguals. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) demonstrate significant EF difficulties in comparison to typically-developing peers. Perhaps bilingualism could alleviate EF impairments in ASD? We review our lab’s findings from bilingual vs. monolingual school-age children with ASD, and those with typical development, on both performance tasks and parent ratings of EF application in daily life. We present the first evidence of a bilingual advantage in ASD on EF performance tasks (verbal fluency and dimensional change card sort), but not parent ratings. The implications of these preliminary findings for future research and clinical practice with children with ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders are discussed.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, executive functions, bilingualism, verbal fluency, dimensional change card sort, rating measures of executive functions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language in children with ASD and bilingual context
    • 2.1Definition of terms: Proficient bilinguals
  • 3.Executive Functions in people with ASD
    • 3.1Dissociations between performance and rating measures of EF – which measure to prioritize when investigating potential effects of bilingualism?
  • 4.The effects of proficient bilingualism on EF performance in children with ASD
    • 4.1Sample characterization
    • 4.2Verbal fluency
    • 4.3Dimensional Change Card Sort task
    • 4.4Parent ratings on the BRIEF
    • 4.5Relation between VF and DCCS in our larger sample
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 12 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.57.20nad
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Gonzalez-Barrero, Ana Maria & Aparna Nadig
2020. Bilingualism and Language Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Gonzalez-Barrero, Ana Maria & Aparna Nadig
2021. Bilingualism and Language Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders, ► pp. 699 ff. DOI logo

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