ArticleNeurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.)2021
Bilingualism Effects on the Cognitive Flexibility of Autistic Children: Evidence From Verbal Dual-Task Paradigms.
Article in Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of transcranial electrical stimulation combined with dual-task training in stroke, mild cognitive impairment and Parkinson's disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Examining Neurodiversity in Bilingual Development Research: Recent Insights Through an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Lens.International journal of language & communication disordersPooled it
- Comparative effects of transcranial direct and alternating current stimulation combined with cognitive-motor dual-task training on functional and cognitive recovery in stroke survivors.Frontiers in neurologyTrial
- A Large-Scale Study on the Relation Between Multilingualism and Social Traits in Adults With and Without Autism Diagnoses.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Bilingualism Enhances Metalinguistic Awareness in Autism: Extending the Two-Dimensional Grammaticality Judgment Task.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Article
- What Silent Pauses Can 'Tell' Us About the Storytelling Skills of Autistic Children: Relations Between Pausing, Language Skills and Executive Functions.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Effects of Bilingualism on Executive Function of Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Scoping Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Autism: The Role of Executive Functions and Language.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2024Article
- Bilingualism Predicts Affective Theory of Mind in Autistic Adults.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2024Article
- Cognitive flexibility in autism: Evidence from young autistic children.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2022Article
- Linguistic Markers of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Narrative Production: Evidence From the Monkey Cartoon Storytelling Task of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule.Autism & developmental language impairmentsArticle
- Attitudes Towards Bilingualism: Insights From Parents of Children With Down Syndrome.International journal of language & communication disordersArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The deficit in cognitive flexibility (i.e., the ability to adapt cognitive behavior to changing contexts) is one of the most prominent characteristics of autistic individuals. Inflexibility may manifest in restricted interests and increased susceptibility to the effects of misinformation either through inefficient inhibition of non-target information or deficient recall of correct information. Bilingualism has been shown to enhance executive functions in both typically developing children and autistic children; yet, the effect of bilingualism on cognitive flexibility in autism remains underexplored. In this study, we used verbal dual-tasks to compare cognitive flexibility across 50 monolingual autistic and 50 bilingual autistic children, and 50 monolingual and 50 bilingual typically developing children. The children were also administered language ability tests and a nonverbal global-local cognitive flexibility task, in order to investigate whether performance in the dual-tasks would be modulated by the children's language and executive function skills. The bilingual autistic children outperformed their monolingual autistic peers in the dual-tasks. The strength of the bilingualism effect, however, was modulated by the type of language processing that interfered with the target information in each dual-task, which suggests that the bilingual autistic children calibrated their processing resources and efficiently adapted them to the changing demands of the dual-task only to the extent that the task did not exceed their language abilities. Bilingual autistic children relied on their executive functions rather than on their language abilities while performing in the dual-tasks. The overall results show that bilingualism compensates for the reduced cognitive flexibility in autism.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.