Bilingualism in autism: Language learning profiles and social experiences.
Bérengère G Digard, Antonella Sorace, Andrew Stanfield and 1 others
PMID 32677446WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults who know more languages rate their social life as more satisfying than monolingual peers.
Proficiency in a third language also linked to higher social quality. This is a self-report correlation, not proof that learning languages improves social outcomes.
Key findings
01Respondents with proficiency in two or more languages rated their social life as more satisfactory than monolingual peers, with a modest effect.
02Higher proficiency in a third language was associated with higher self-rated social life quality.
03The study reveals a wide diversity of language learning profiles among autistic adults, including late acquisition and varied proficiency levels.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional design prevents causal inference; we cannot know if knowing languages improves social life or if socially engaged people are more likely to learn languages. Self-reported diagnosis and proficiency may be inaccurate; self-rated proficiency has not been validated in autistic populations. Sample was overrepresented by females (58.2%) compared to typical autism demographics, limiting generalisability. The survey was only in English, excluding those without English literacy. Models explained a small proportion of variance in social life quality (3.2%–6.6%), indicating other factors are more influential. Recruitment targeted bilingualism, potentially skewing the sample toward those interested in language learning.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The research was funded by the Patrick Wild Centre, University of Edinburgh.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the positive association between multilingualism and social life quality as evidence that teaching an autistic person a second language will improve their social outcomes. The study is cross-sectional and self-reported, so it cannot establish causation, and the effect size was modest.