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Relations Between Bilingualism and Autistic-Like Traits in a General Population Sample of Primary School Children.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Kašćelan, Draško  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4465-0844
Katsos, Napoleon 
Gibson, Jenny L 

Abstract

Some evidence suggests that bilingualism improves communication and cognitive skills which are often impaired in autism. However, diagnosing autism in bilinguals may suffer a cultural bias, which can affect the investigation of bilingualism and autism. Therefore, the current study investigates relations between autistic-like traits (ALTs) and bilingualism in a general population sample of 394 children (M age = 8;3). Within the high-scoring group on the ALT measure, monolinguals had significantly higher ALT scores than bilinguals. There were no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in the low-scoring group. Across the whole sample, age and structural language skills accounted for 35% variance in ALTs, while bilingualism had no effect on ALTs. Furthermore, structural language skills explained more variance in ALTs among bilinguals than among monolinguals.

Description

Keywords

Autism, Autistic-like traits, Bilingualism, Child language, Structural language, Autistic Disorder, Child, Communication, Female, Humans, Male, Multilingualism

Journal Title

J Autism Dev Disord

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0162-3257
1573-3432

Volume Title

49

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/N004671/1)
Isaac Newton Trust (MINUTE 1423(a))
Fondation Wiener Anspach (unknown)
Gates Cambridge Trust