TUESDAY, Jan. 7, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Kids with autism who speak more than one language tend to have fewer symptoms from their disorder.
Being multilingual not only enhances their general cognitive abilities, but also helps them better control their daily thoughts and actions, researchers reported in a study published recently in the journal Autism Research.
These results should alleviate worries some parents might have that speaking multiple languages around the home could contribute to delays in their child’s development, said senior researcher Lucina Uddin, director of the UCLA Brain Connectivity and Cognition Laboratory.
“The big takeaway is we don’t see any negative effects of speaking multiple languages in the home,” Uddin said in a news release from the college. “It's actually beneficial to celebrate all the languages associated with your culture.”
Prior research has suggested that speaking more than one language can benefit average kids’ abilities to think, plan and organize, researchers said in background thoughts.
Given that, researchers figured that multilingualism might prove a benefit for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
For their study, researchers recruited more than 100 children 7 to 12 from monolingual and multilingual homes. Most of the multilingual families spoke Spanish and English.
Parents were asked to score their child’s brain skills related to:
Inhibition, or the ability to avoid becoming distracted by something irrelevant.
Working memory, or the ability to keep short-term memories like a phone number in mind.
Shifting, or the ability to switch between two or more different tasks, such as cleaning up after playing with toys.
The parents were also asked to score abilities affected by autism, such as the ability to understand different perspectives, communicate in social situations, and manage repetitive behaviors.
“It turns out that speaking multiple languages, whether or not you have a diagnosis of autism, is associated with better inhibition, better shifting or flexibility, and also better perspective taking ability,” Uddin said.
The talents enhanced by knowing more than one language could be causing these benefits, Uddin said.
“If you have to juggle two languages, you have to suppress one in order to use the other. That's the idea, that inhibition might be bolstered by knowing two languages."
The researchers plan to expand their study with a group of about 150 children with autism in a research project that will also include brain imaging scans along with cognitive testing.
More information
Dartmouth University has more on the brain benefits of multilingualism.
SOURCE: UCLA, news release, Jan. 3, 2025