Today I was reading through the abstracts from the 8th International Congress Autism-Europe, which I wanted to attend in late August but had to down-prioritize because of the stressful back-to-school transition.
Anyhow, there were two presentations connected with autism and bilingualism. Both acknowledged that the research is basically nonexistent at this point, but that families have in the past been encouraged to pick one language for their child with autism. We refused to do that.
These two presentations had positive results for children with autism who were learning a second language.
I'll post them separately below, to avoid this getting too long.
ETA: Here's a link to a topic on our forum where various
members describe their experiences with raising their children with
autism to be bilingual.
http://www.autism-pdd.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=24719&am p;KW=bilingual
CAN ASPERGER SYNDROME CHILDREN LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND
BECOME BILINGUAL? STRENGTHS, CHALLENGES, AND POSITIVE OUTCOMES*
Christine Besnard, Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada
Background: Given the fact that many Asperger Syndrome children have impairments in social communication in their first language (L1), until today, nothing has ever been written or said about whether or not they are able to learn a foreign/second language (L2). And yet, thousands of families around the world who live in multilingual countries are faced with the cruel dilemma of deciding which language they should teach their autistic children: should they teach them the official language of their country, or should they teach them the language spoken by their families, friends and cultural communities?
Objectives: Show that high functioning autistic children can learn an L2, and that it's beneficial to their overall development.
Methods used: Longitudinal studies of several high functioning autistic L2 learners as well as research on children with communication and language disorders enrolled in French immersion and regular French language programs in Canadian schools.
Results and conclusions: We are suggesting that high functioning autistic individuals are capable of learning an L2. Indeed, despite their deficiencies in the realm of communication and social interaction, they have certain strengths (long term memory, excellent reproduction of foreign accents, recognition of patterns, etc.) that can serve as assets in their L2 learning. We also suggest that such learning has major salutary outcomes not only on their overall language development (with positive transfers from L2 to L1) but also on their cognitive, emotional, cultural and social development.
Sponsors: York University
Source: http://www.autismcongressoslo.org/docs/book_of_abstracts-sva lbard.pdf
AUTISM AND BILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT; A CASE STUDY
Elisabeth Grindheim, The National Autism Uni, Rikshospitalet- Radiumhospitalet Medical Center, Oslo, Norway
Background: Bilingual language learning in autistic children ha not been much documented. Questions concerning the abilities, learning conditions and progression for two cultural children with autism in communication and language learning have not yet been thoroughly discussed in the literature.
Objective: To discuss present status in the field, and identify factors relating to outcome of interventions. Ethical aspects on choosing language for a child with autism living within a minority culture and attending a majority kindergarten will be addressed. Key features of inclusion of an AAC-user in a kindergarten will be discussed.
Method: Case study over two years of an initially speechless autistic child with two-cultural background. At the individual level, bilingual alternative and augmentative communication was implemented. At a contextual level in the kindergarten the philosophy of inclusion, meaning that all the children should be able to communicate with AAC. Examples of dialogs between staff and the child, and between children will be presented on different stages of his language acquisition.
Results: After two years he could communicate on both languages, he mixed oral and AAC use in his sentences. His nonverbal signals were used in accordance with actual language. Some of these different cultural uses of nonverbal signals gave rise to discussions on the issues of features used for differential diagnosing.
Conclusion: This case demonstrates the ability of autistic children for code switching in language use. Central characteristics in the intervention were essential for the outcome, like the inclusion philosophy, use of bilingual AAC means adjusted to this child’s cognitive style, and collaboration between day care and his family.
Sponsor: By the Government
Key Word: Bilingualism, autism, language development, intervention
http://www.autismcongressoslo.org/docs/book_of_abstracts-pos ters-svalbard.pdf
[QUOTE=Daddy]I am wondering when an ASD child has already problem with pronunciation of the words in the first language how possibly he can learn the 2nd one. Maybe you are talking about understanding (receptive) language not expressive.
Daddy
[/QUOTE]Daniel's mom-where did you hear that about another language being required? I didn't take any foreign language in HS and graduated with honors (in 2003)...
I work with one kiddo (7 yrs old, autism, down syndrome and a whole slew of auto-immune and feeding disorders) who LOVES Dora. Through Dora, we've found he knows quite a bit of Spanish (can ID colors, numbers, letters, basic objects in Spanish just as well as he can in English.) It's really interesting how our kids have the capacity for this just as much as any other kid.
Daddy I had great granny/relatives from that area, they spoke 3 langs.Kids can pick up on other langauges faster than adults can. They younger the faster they learn. America requires another language to graduate highschool.
Here in Quebec all kids speak 2 languages (French, English) perfectly. It is true that kids brain capture the language faster but we are speaking about typical kids with no challenge. I am wondering when an ASD child has already problem with pronunciation of the words in the first language how possibly he can learn the 2nd one. Maybe you are talking about understanding (receptive) language not expressive.
Daddy
My two kids are bilingual both receptively and expressively. My 9 year old has atypical autism and mixes languages a lot more than his younger brother (who has social delays but no diagnosis yet). This makes him sometimes difficult for kids to understand but not adults (everyone learns English here from first grade on). Although he has some language delays, he has never been nonverbal -- his first word came at age 1 and built from there. If he were nonverbal, it probably would have been tougher to say no when people encouraged us to switch to speaking Norwegian to him exclusively.
That's just it...Jacob has sat through Forrest Gump in French at least 3 times in the last month...whole movie. Sorry about using the N word in that previous post. I hate that word and wasn't really paying attention when I typed lol. I'm trying to strike the word "normal" from my vocabulary totally, but looks like I still need some work. I'll rephrase...typical or atypical?
We have videos in both languages, and when kids come and visit, sometimes they want to put on a video that happens to be in English. It doesn't seem to bother them that they can't understand what's being said -- kids entertainment tends to be so visually stimulating that that's enough, I guess. So yes, I'd say that watching movies in a foreign language is "typical."
They rarely watch the whole film, though, and I doubt they would watch it again and again if, for example, they borrowed the film and took it home. Once the visual lost its novelty, they'd probably miss being able to understand the dialogue.
We are bilingual. We were told by our son's paed that "his brain can handle both languages" and to continue to speak both at home. His receptive and expressive is much better for English. He can barely understand the other one.
Mary
The other day I was sorting through some papers and found some articles on bilingual families I had printed out. They are not specifically about autism, but may be worth reading.
This article is called "Helping families from other cultures decide on how to talk to their child with language delays". It was written by Claire Watson, Senior S-LP at the Hanen Centre, and was originally published in 1995.
http://www.haneninontario.org/Hanen2002/pages/extra/Misc/one _language_or_two.htm
Center for Applied Linguistics has an article here called "Two or more languages in early childhood: some general points and practical recommendations" by Annick De Houwer.
http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/earlychild.html
"Raising bilingual children" by Marsha Rosenberg.
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Rosenberg-Bilingual.html
FOreign language is required for HS graduation in some states. If there is any sort of learning disability that make learning a foreign language not likely, the IEP Team can exempt the student from foreign language.One other issue with language learning that is unique is the situation for children who are adopted from other countries. Their native tongue fades before their new tongue is acquired. They have no "support" in their foreign tongue at home,so there is a difficult period where they have no language to communicate in. Of course, this is happens when the child is adopted at an older age. Traditional ESL services tend not to work well in these situations. There's a neuropsychologist in Nanuet, N.Y who specializes in this. His name escapes me, but I bet you can google "foreign adoption ESL" and find him.
I found a couple more that I had printed out. These articles are not specific to autism, but are good general articles about bilingualism.
"Bilingual acquisition" by Fred Genesee. Three page article that covers some commonly held concerns.
http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_vie w.aspx?ArticleID=38
Two page article called "Children and bilingualism" written by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
http://www.cbsld.com/html/children_and_bilingualism.html
Here are some articles about learning English for children who were adopted into English speaking families from other countries.
http://www.adoptionarticlesdirectory.com/myarticles/Boris-Gi ndis--Ph-D-/2
I had to teach my kids to speak in one language before introducing a second or their progress was just nil. My older one spoke 2 languages before he regressed, but after that, until we settled for one he couldn't process language.
The doctors + pros my kids see were completely divided on this issue and left it to me to decide for myself. I think it depends on the child, both of mine and processing problems. They are both still learning their second language but have age appropriate speech whcih I'm really happy about. .
Here's an article in the Economist that says that bilingual babies are better at switching attention and counteracting a learned response, basically more flexible thinkers.