The cognitive benefits of bilingualism in autism spectrum disorder: Is theory of mind boosted and by which underlying factors?
autism spectrum disorder
bilingualism
executive functions
language
theory of mind
Journal
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research
ISSN: 1939-3806
Titre abrégé: Autism Res
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101461858
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
08 2021
08 2021
Historique:
revised:
05
04
2021
received:
04
11
2020
accepted:
03
05
2021
pubmed:
20
5
2021
medline:
13
8
2021
entrez:
19
5
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
This study examined whether bilingualism boosts Theory of Mind as measured by a non-verbal false belief (FB) task in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and how this potential boost may stem from improvements in a variety of other domains, namely executive functions (EFs), language, metalinguistic awareness skills, as well as autism severity. One hundred and three children with ASD (7- to 15-year-olds) (43 bilingual and 60 age- and IQ-matched monolingual children) were tested on a nonverbal task of attentional switching, working memory and updating task, and an online, low-verbal first-order FB task. Results showed a clear FB benefit for bilingual children with ASD as compared with their monolingual peers. There were also boosts in EF, however, there is no evidence that these EF boosts drove the FB advantage. Enhanced FB was not explained either by language, metalinguistic skills, or lower autism severity. While the results do not conclusively settle the debate on what triggers the ToM advantage in bilingual children with ASD, the empirical picture of the current study suggests that the ToM component of FB understanding in bilingual children with ASD is enhanced by the bilingual experience per se. LAY SUMMARY: The current study aimed to determine if and how bilingualism may improve the ability to understand others' beliefs in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We assessed their belief reasoning alongside a series of other skills hypothesized to be beneficial for such reasoning, namely understanding, producing, and thinking about language, recalling and switching between information, and the severity of their autistic symptoms. The overall findings highlight advantages for bilingual children with ASD over their monolingual peers for grasping beliefs, thus suggesting that pursuing bilingualism may be beneficial for cognition in ASD. Other boosts were also associated with bilingualism, such as recalling and switching between information, but these boosts were not directly related to belief understanding, highlighting the beneficial role of bilingualism per se.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
1695-1709Informations de copyright
© 2021 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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