Bilingualism Enhances Metalinguistic Awareness in Autism: Extending the Two-Dimensional Grammaticality Judgment Task.
Pauline Wolfer, Franziska Baumeister, Stephanie Durrleman
PMID 41466563WHAT IT FOUND
Bilingual autistic children outperformed monolingual autistic peers on grammatical judgment tasks requiring cognitive control.
No such advantage was found in neurotypical children. Higher second-language proficiency predicted better overall performance in autistic children.
Key findings
01Bilingual autistic children significantly outperformed monolingual autistic peers on sentences requiring cognitive control (Gm) and baseline grammatically correct sentences (GM).
02No significant difference in performance on cognitive control tasks was found between bilingual and monolingual neurotypical children.
03Higher second-language proficiency was associated with better overall task performance across groups, with a specific positive association for cognitive control in autistic children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample excluded children with low IQ and those unable to sustain attention, so results may not generalize to the full heterogeneity of the autism spectrum. L2 proficiency was based on parent report rather than objective standardized assessment. The study did not account for exposure to a third language (L3). Performance varied by testing language, with English-tested participants scoring lower, potentially due to linguistic features of the stimuli or group composition.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume bilingualism confers a universal advantage in metalinguistic awareness. The benefit was specific to autistic children in this study; neurotypical bilingual children did not outperform their monolingual peers on the primary cognitive control measures.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →