Relations Between Bilingualism and Autistic-Like Traits in a General Population Sample of Primary School Children

Abstract

Some evidence suggests that bilingualism improves communication and cognitive skills which are often impaired in autism. However, diagnosing autism in bilinguals may suffer a cultural bias, which can affect the investigation of bilingualism and autism. Therefore, the current study investigates relations between autistic-like traits (ALTs) and bilingualism in a general population sample of 394 children (M age = 8;3). Within the high-scoring group on the ALT measure, monolinguals had significantly higher ALT scores than bilinguals. There were no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in the low-scoring group. Across the whole sample, age and structural language skills accounted for 35% variance in ALTs, while bilingualism had no effect on ALTs. Furthermore, structural language skills explained more variance in ALTs among bilinguals than among monolinguals.