ERIC Number: EJ1428796
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Jul
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1362-3613
EISSN: EISSN-1461-7005
Bilingual Exposure Might Enhance L1 Development in Cantonese-English Bilingual Autistic Children: Evidence from the Production of Focus
Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, v28 n7 p1795-1808 2024
This study investigated bilingualism effects on the production of focus in 5- to 9-year-old Cantonese-English bilingual autistic children's L1 Cantonese, compared to their monolingual autistic peers as well as monolingual and bilingual typically developing children matched in nonverbal IQ, working memory, receptive vocabulary and maternal education. The results from an elicitation task showed that monolingual autistic children had significantly lower accuracy than typically developing children in producing focus in subject and object positions. Bilingual autistic children in general performed similarly to monolingual autistic children but outperformed their monolingual autistic peers in the production of object focus with a significantly higher accuracy. The total amount of English exposure did not relate to the accuracy of focus production in autistic and typically developing children. Our results also revealed autistic children's tendency to make use of less prosodic means to produce focus. The overall findings indicate that bilingual exposure has no detrimental effect on the language skills of autistic children but might enhance the production of focus in bilingual autistic children's L1 Cantonese.
Descriptors: Autism Spectrum Disorders, Bilingualism, Native Language, Second Language Learning, Children, Sino Tibetan Languages, Accuracy, Intonation, Suprasegmentals, Monolingualism, English (Second Language), Comparative Analysis, Matched Groups, Short Term Memory, Nonverbal Ability, Receptive Language, Mothers, Vocabulary Development, Educational Attainment, Task Analysis, Language Processing, Sentence Structure, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Hong Kong
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A