Being Bilingual May Help Children with Autism Improve Cognitive Flexibility

Summary: Researchers at McGill University report that bilingualism may help children on the autism spectrum with certain executive functions, particularly the ability to switch between tasks.

Source: McGill University

New research suggests that growing up bilingual can offer benefits for some children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), especially in the area of cognitive flexibility — the capacity to shift attention and adapt to changing rules or goals. The study, published in the journal Child Development, compared task-switching performance in bilingual and monolingual children with and without ASD and found that bilingual children with ASD showed improved performance on a laboratory measure of set-shifting.

Study design and participants

The authors tested 40 children aged six to nine years old, divided into four groups of ten: bilingual children with ASD, monolingual children with ASD, bilingual typically developing children, and monolingual typically developing children. The research team used a computerized dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task to measure set-shifting — a standard experimental measure for assessing the ability to change cognitive rules — and also collected parent reports of executive function in daily life. Working memory was also assessed.

Task details: sorting by color then shape

In the DCCS task, children first sorted stimuli on a screen according to one dimension (for example, color: blue rabbits vs. red boats). After a number of trials, the sorting rule changed and participants had to sort the same items according to a different dimension (for example, shape: rabbits vs. boats), ignoring color. This shift from one rule to another is designed to assess set-shifting ability and cognitive flexibility under changing demands.

Key findings

The study found a specific advantage for bilingual children with ASD on the DCCS set-shifting task: bilingual children with ASD were better able to switch rules in this controlled laboratory test than monolingual children with ASD. No comparable bilingual advantage was observed for parent-reported set-shifting in daily life, and working memory measures did not differ significantly between bilingual and monolingual children with ASD. Typically developing bilingual and monolingual children did not show the same pattern of group differences in this sample.

These results indicate that bilingualism may mitigate some laboratory-measured difficulties in set-shifting for children on the autism spectrum, while not necessarily translating directly to everyday executive function tasks as reported by caregivers. The findings suggest a selective effect of bilingual experience on cognitive flexibility in structured testing environments.

Implications for families and educators

Professor Aparna Nadig, the senior author of the study from McGill’s School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, described the results as both novel and surprising given ongoing debate in the field about whether a bilingual advantage exists for executive functions. The study provides initial evidence that bilingualism’s influence on cognitive flexibility can extend to children with ASD.

Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, the study’s first author and a recent McGill PhD graduate, emphasized the practical relevance for families. She noted that many families value bilingual upbringing for cultural and social reasons, and in multilingual societies, knowing more than one language can be important for future education, employment, and community participation. The study addresses concerns sometimes raised by clinicians and educators that exposure to multiple languages might worsen language or cognitive difficulties in children with ASD.

Limitations and next steps

The researchers acknowledge that the sample size was small and that results should be interpreted cautiously. They emphasize the need for larger-scale studies to replicate and extend these findings. The team plans to follow the children with ASD from this study over several years to determine whether the bilingual advantage observed in laboratory testing is associated with developmental outcomes in everyday life as the children grow older.

Funding and publication

This research was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et Culture and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The article appears in Child Development. Original article: “Can Bilingualism Mitigate Set-Shifting Difficulties in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders?” by Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero and Aparna S. Nadig. Published online November 7, 2017. doi:10.1111/cdev.12979

Image shows heart made up of words in different languages. — Forty children between ages six and nine — bilingual and monolingual, with and without ASD — completed a computerized task measuring the ability to shift between sorting rules. The study found a bilingual advantage on the laboratory set-shifting measure for children with ASD. Image source: NeuroscienceNews.com (public domain).

Conclusion

While more research is needed, this study offers encouraging evidence that bilingual experience can support aspects of executive function in children with autism, particularly in lab-based measures of cognitive flexibility. The findings contribute to the broader conversation about bilingual development and suggest that bilingualism should not be dismissed as harmful for children with ASD; under some conditions it may provide measurable cognitive benefits.