An exploratory longitudinal study of social and language outcomes in children with autism in bilingual home environments.
Vanessa Zhou, Jeffrey A Munson, Jessica Greenson and 3 others
PMID 29237275WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism in bilingual homes showed language and social gains comparable to matched children in monolingual homes.
Bilingual exposure did not predict worse outcomes; one gesture measure favoured bilingual homes, but differences were small and not consistent.
Key findings
01Most language and social comparisons between children in bilingual homes and matched children in monolingual homes were not statistically significant at baseline, after one year, and after two years.
02Children in the bilingual-home community treatment group showed significant positive change on all language variables after one year and after two years, while home language environment did not significantly moderate treatment effects.
03After two years, children in the bilingual-home group showed a mean increase of 33.7 on the parent-reported total gestures measure, compared with 20.9 in the monolingual-home group, but the interaction with treatment was not significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was a small secondary analysis of children from a randomized trial, not a study designed to test whether bilingual exposure causes better or worse outcomes. Most comparisons did not survive correction for multiple comparisons, so the significant gesture and interpersonal differences should be treated as preliminary. The sample was small; 13 bilingual-home children were available before exclusions, and the two-year gesture analysis included 11 bilingual-home and 21 monolingual-home children. The children were mostly from higher-income families and met strict exclusion criteria, so the results may not apply to broader community samples. Intervention and assessments were delivered in English only, which may have underestimated the abilities of children in bilingual homes and may not reflect bilingual therapy. Home language environment was measured only at baseline by parent report and can change over time. Several outcomes came from parent questionnaires, and parents' interpretation of questions may have influenced scores. Matching was imperfect for gender because there were fewer girls in the sample.
Declared interests
The article is listed as supported by NIH and non-U.S. government funding. Dr Sally Rogers reported royalties from Early Start Denver Model books and materials; all other coauthors reported no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that bilingual homes improve language or social outcomes. The main pattern was no significant difference, and the gesture gain was an exploratory finding in a small sample that did not show a treatment interaction.