Bilingual Exposure May Enhance First Language Development in Cantonese-English Autistic Children

This study examined how bilingual exposure affects language development in autistic children from Hong Kong, comparing bilingual (Cantonese-English) autistic children with monolingual autistic peers and typically developing children matched on key variables. Results showed bilingual autistic children performed comparably to typically developing children and better than monolingual autistic children on linguistic tasks, suggesting a potential bilingual advantage rather than burden for autistic language learners.