Bilingualism in autism: Language learning profiles and social experiences.

Autism : the International Journal of Research and Practice
Bérengère G DigardSue Fletcher-Watson

Abstract

Bilingualism changes the way people relate to others. This is particularly interesting in the case of autism, where social interaction presents many challenges. A better understanding of the overlap between the social variations of bilingualism and autism could unveil new ways to support the social experiences of autistic people. This research aims to understand the language learning and social experiences of autistic people who speak one, two or more languages. A total of 297 autistic adults (aged between 16 and 80 years) completed an online questionnaire that included general demographic questions, social life quality self-rating questions, language history questions, and open questions about the respondents' bilingualism experience. Respondents had a wide range of language experiences: there were 89 monolingual English speakers, 98 bilinguals, 110 respondents knew three languages or more, all with a wide range of abilities in their languages. In the full group, younger respondents were more satisfied with their social life, and respondents with many languages were more satisfied with their social life than respondents with few languages. In the multilingual group, younger respondents were more satisfied with their social lif...Continue Reading

References

Nov 16, 2010·Bulletin of the World Health Organization·T Bedirhan UstünUNKNOWN WHO/NIH Joint Project
Apr 6, 2017·Journal of Child Language·David Barner

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Software Mentioned

Bilingual Language Experience Calculator ( BiLEC
SurveyMonkey
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