title: Communicative Development in Bilingually Exposed Chinese Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We examined the association of bilingual exposure with structural and pragmatic language development in Chinese children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).
  
  
  METHODS
  The parents of 54 children with ASD exposed to 1 (n = 31) or 2 (n = 23) Chinese languages completed (a) a questionnaire to evaluate their child's competence in structural language and pragmatic ability in their dominant language (Children's Communication Checklist-Second Edition; Bishop, 2006), and (b) a questionnaire to assess their child's social functioning (Social Responsiveness Scale; Constantino & Gruber, 2005; Wang, Lee, Chen, & Hsu, 2012). In addition, parents completed thorough interviews regarding the linguistic environment of their children (Language Environment Interview; Hambly & Fombonne, 2011).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Multivariate analyses of variance revealed that bilingually exposed children with ASD did not demonstrate significantly different performance on any standard measure relative to their monolingual peers.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings suggest that bilingual language exposure is not associated with additional challenges for the development of the dominant language in children with ASD. The lack of negative associations in our sample is not likely to be due to the comparatively early diagnosis and/or intervention that are available in other countries. We discuss implications for decisions regarding the linguistic environment of children with ASD.
authors: Rachel
authors: R
authors: Reetzke
authors: Xiaobing
authors: X
authors: Zou
authors: Li
authors: L
authors: Sheng
authors: Napoleon
authors: N
authors: Katsos
mesh_terms: D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D012919:Social Behavior; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors