Bilingualism as a natural therapy for autistic children

© Garner - An international team led by UNIGE demonstrates that the characteristics of bilingualism allow autistic children to compensate for certain fundamental deficits. Affecting more than one in a hundred children, autism spectrum disorder is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders. It has a particular impact on social interaction, including difficulties in understanding other people's perspectives, beliefs, desires and emotions, known as 'theory of mind'. Bilingual families with an autistic child often tend - and are sometimes encouraged - to forego the use of one of the home languages, so as not to further complicate the development of their child's communicative skills. A researcher from the University of Geneva (UNIGE, Switzerland), in collaboration with the Universities of Thessaly (Greece) and Cambridge (Great-Britain), has shown that bilingualism allows autistic children to partially compensate for deficits in theory of mind and executive functions, which are at the root of many of their challenges. These results can be read in the journal Autism Research . Diagnosed in early childhood, autism spectrum disorder has a particular impact on a child's social and communicative abilities.