Should Parents Only Use One Language with Their Autistic Children? The Relations Between Multilingualism, Children's Social Skills, and Parent-Child Communication.
Purpose: Parents of autistic children are often advised to use only one language to simplify their child's language acquisition. Often this recommendation orients towards the geographically predominant language, which may cause difficulties especially for minority-language families. On the other han...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders Vol. 55; no. 8; pp. 2761 - 2774 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Aug2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=186910015&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 186910015 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 01623257 AUT jtl: Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders issn: 01623257 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2025 vid: 55 iid: 8 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 186910015 177530888 186910015 186910015 10.1007/s10803-024-06347-w 186910015 ppf: 2761 ppct: 13 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Should Parents Only Use One Language with Their Autistic Children? The Relations Between Multilingualism, Children's Social Skills, and Parent-Child Communication. aug: au: Franco, Maïte Costa, Andreia P. affil: https://ror.org/036x5ad56 Institute for Health and Behaviour, Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, Maison des Sciences Humaines, University of Luxembourg, 11 Porte des Sciences, L-4366, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg sug: subj: Multilingualism Evaluation Social Skills In Infancy and Childhood Parent-Child Relations Parents of Children with Disabilities Autism Spectrum Disorder Parental Attitudes Evaluation Funding Source Europe Human Questionnaires Language Communication Skills Coefficient alpha Summated Rating Scaling Scales Male Female Mothers Fathers Adult Middle Age Child, Preschool Child Adult: 19-44 years Middle Aged: 45-64 years Child, Preschool: 2-5 years Child: 6-12 years Male Female ab: Purpose: Parents of autistic children are often advised to use only one language to simplify their child's language acquisition. Often this recommendation orients towards the geographically predominant language, which may cause difficulties especially for minority-language families. On the other hand, scientific evidence suggests that multilingualism does not hinder language acquisition and that communicating in exclusively foreign languages may even impede social interaction. Therefore, we investigated how parent language use is linked to the social skills of 68 autistic children and to their parents' ability to feel comfortable, authentic, and free to express themselves. Methods: Data was collected online, using parent-report questionnaires from parents of 25 different nationalities in the European context, assessing children's language, autistic traits (AQ-C), social skills (SRS-2), and parent-child communication. Results: Language use was not found to significantly relate to social skills in children. However, parents using their mother tongue, either only their mother tongue or in combination with other languages, reported feeling significantly more comfortable and more authentic than parents using exclusively foreign languages, either one or many. There were no significant differences between monolingual and multilingual families regarding parents' feelings in regard to their language use. Conclusions: Our findings may encourage specialists to consider multilingualism more often and consult with parents whether monolingualism is worth risking the negative outcomes we have found. Especially, since advising parents to raise their child multilingually may facilitate access to therapeutic treatment, childcare, and social interaction in multilingual societies and families and subsequently improve support and orientation for stakeholders. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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