The Impact of Bilingualism on Everyday Executive Functions of English-Arabic Autistic Children: Through a Parent-Teacher Lens.

Researchers studied whether speaking two languages (Arabic and English) helps or hurts thinking skills in autistic children. They compared 27 bilingual autistic children with monolingual autistic children and typically developing kids. Parents filled out questionnaires about their children's attention, memory, and ability to switch between tasks. The results showed that bilingual autistic children had better everyday thinking skills than monolingual autistic children according to parents.

This suggests speaking two languages doesn't harm autistic children and might actually help them.

This study examined how bilingualism affects executive function skills in autistic children by comparing Arabic-English bilingual autistic children (n=27) with monolingual peers and typically developing children (n=53), aged 5-12 years. Executive functions assessed included sustained attention, interference control, flexible switching, and working memory through parent and teacher rating scales. Results showed generalized positive effects for bilingual autistic children compared to monolingual autistic peers across all executive function domains, but only when using parent ratings. The findings suggest bilingualism does not harm executive function skills in autistic children and may actually help mitigate daily difficulties they face.

Families of autistic children can be reassured that maintaining bilingual environments is not harmful and may provide executive function benefits. However, the parent-specific nature of findings suggests benefits may be more apparent in home settings and warrants further investigation across different contexts.

Small sample size (27 bilingual autistic children), reliance on rating scales rather than objective measures, benefits only observed in parent ratings but not teacher ratings, and cross-sectional design limits causal inferences about bilingualism's long-term effects.

There is evidence that autistic children may have reduced executive function skills, contributing to day-to-day difficulties, but much remains unknown regarding the influence of bilingualism. We investigated its influence on sustained attention, interference control, flexible switching and working memory, in Arabic-English autistic (n = 27) and typically developing peers (n = 53) children, aged 5 to 12 years old. Parents and teachers completed rating measures assessing children's daily EF abilities. Results showed generalized positive effects for bilingual autistic children relative to their monolingual peers across all EF domains, but using parent ratings only.

The findings indicate that bilingualism does not negatively impact the executive function skills of autistic children, and that it might mitigate difficulties faced on a day-to-day basis.