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Many people with autism spectrum disorder are raised in bilingual or multilingual households. Nearly one in four Texas public school students speaks a language other than English at home.
Now, a research project at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) is exploring if being bilingual has an impact on autistic children, and it invites parents of autistic children to help.
Cecilia Montiel-Nava, a clinical psychologist at UTRGV, explained that communication is more than spoken language.
“It's the gestures that you make, the eye contact, understanding the emotional impact of what you are saying,” she added. “So it is not just language.”
Montiel-Nava said some parents are told to speak to their autistic child in English only because more than one language can confuse them.
However, she said learning another language is an asset, and it's what she considers outdated advice to parents that not only limits the child's socialization skills, but also cuts off learning their own heritage, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.
“And if you don't have your heritage language, how [are you] going to communicate and interact with your grandparents, with your extended family?” Montiel-Nava added. “So instead of improving the overall setup for an autistic individual, you are just making it smaller and smaller.”
She hoped her research will also help providers in how they approach parents of newly diagnosed autistic children.
“So this is something that when you give the diagnosis, you should be telling parents they could be receiving services in English, but you can still speak in Spanish at home, and you are not harming your child,” Montiel-Nava explained.
Maintaining children’s roots and identity in the Valley is important to Montiel-Nava.
“So here in the Valley, being bilingual is not about language. Being bilingual is about identity,” she said. “The Valley identity is bilingual. The Valley heritage is bilingual.”
The study will involve 150 autistic and non-autistic children ages 9 to 11 who are bilingual and monolingual and their parents and guardians.
Montiel-Nava planned to work through the summer, and she invited the community to participate. Anyone interested in the study can fill out this form. Selected participants will take a screening survey, IQ testing, ADOS-2 testing (an autism evaluation), and language assessments. The surveys will be conducted online or at home. The tests will be conducted in Edinburg. For accommodations, contact bechildlab@utrgv.edu.
Montiel-Nava said she hoped the study will create a better communication pathway between providers, parents, and children.
