Multilingualism helps autism: scientists reveal secret to improving cognitive skills

According to the authors, it's not just about general mental abilities: children from bilingual families have lower levels of repetitive behaviour and better skills in managing daily actions and thoughts.

Source: Celia Romero et al, "Multilingualism impacts children's executive function and core autism symptoms", Autism Research (2024). DOI: 10.1002/aur.3260

The article is published in the journal Autism Research and is based on a study involving more than 100 children aged 7-12 years with or without a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Some of the families spoke only one language at home, and some were multilingual (most often Spanish and English).

Parents were asked to rate their child's level of "executive function," that is, their ability to switch between activities, control their actions, and retain information in memory. The scientists also looked at some key signs of autism - difficulties with communication, understanding other people's points of view and the presence of stereotypical (repetitive) actions.

Children growing up in multilingual environments were found to be better at switching between tasks and less likely to get "stuck" on individual actions or thoughts. They also had better "inhibition" skills - that is, the ability to avoid distractions and suppress "unnecessary" reactions. The authors of the study explain this by the fact that using multiple languages requires constantly selecting appropriate speech and inhibiting other speech, thus training the brain.

Interestingly, bilingualism also had a positive effect on one of the main difficulties in autism - communication. Parents reported an improved ability to 'perspective taking' (understanding another's point of view) and a reduction in repetitive behaviour.

Some families fear that learning a second language may exacerbate the speech delays or comprehension problems often seen in children with autism. However, as the authors emphasise, several studies (including this one) have already found no negative effect. On the contrary, the results suggest that having several languages in the family may give the child an extra boost to cognitive and social skills.

The scientists plan to expand the experiment to include about 150 children in order to gain a deeper understanding of exactly how the knowledge of several languages affects the brain and whether it can help in remedial programmes for RAS.