Brief Report: An Exploratory Study of Lexical Skills in Bilingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 42; no. 7; pp. 1499 - 1503
• Main Authors: Petersen, Jill M., Marinova-Todd, Stefka H., Mirenda, Pat
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.07.2012; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorders; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Bilingualism; Biological and medical sciences; Brief Report; British Columbia; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child clinical studies; Child Development; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive - diagnosis; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive - epidemiology; Child, Preschool; China - ethnology; Chinese; Comorbidity; Comparative Analysis; Comprehension; Cross-Sectional Studies; Developmental disorders; Emigrants and Immigrants; English; Female; Humans; Infantile autism; Language Acquisition; Language Development Disorders - diagnosis; Language Development Disorders - epidemiology; Language Skills; Language Tests; Male; Medical sciences; Monolingualism; Multilingualism; Neurosciences; Pediatrics; Pervasive Developmental Disorders; Preschool Children; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Public Health; Scores; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development; China; British Columbia; Vocabulary; CDI; Chinese; ASD; Bilingual; Human; Lexicon; Developmental disorder; Verbal ability; Autism; Pervasive developmental disorder; Language; Bilingualism; Child
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-011-1366-y

Studying lexical diversity in bilingual children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can contribute important information to our understanding of language development in this diverse population. In this exploratory study, lexical comprehension and production and overall language skills were investigated in 14 English–Chinese bilingual and 14 English monolingual preschool-age children with ASD. Results indicated that both groups had equivalent scores on all but one measure of language and vocabulary, including English production vocabulary, conceptual production vocabulary, and vocabulary comprehension. When comparing the two languages of bilingual participants, there were no significant differences in production vocabulary size or vocabulary comprehension scores. The results provide evidence that bilingual English–Chinese preschool-age children with ASD have the capacity to function successfully as bilinguals.