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Speaking Two Languages Might Sharpen Thinking Skills in Kids With Autism

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Feb 10, 2025.

By Carole Tanzer Miller HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Feb. 10, 2025 — Learning a second language may seem like an unusual approach to treating autism, but research points to surprising benefits of becoming bilingual.

"If you have to juggle two languages, you have to suppress one in order to use the other," said researcher Lucina Uddin, a professor of psychiatry and developmental psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a news release. "That's the idea, that inhibition -- or the ability to stop yourself from doing something -- might be bolstered by knowing two languages."

For the study, Uddin, who was a professor at the University of Miami when the study was conducted, and her team looked at 116 kids between 7 and 12 years of age.

Twenty-one of the 53 participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were multilingual, as were 35 kids who were developing typically.

Most of the multilingual kids spoke English and Spanish. Some spoke French, Hebrew, Portuguese, Japanese or Bulgarian along with English.

Parents filled out questionnaires assessing their child's ability to understand other people's point of view as well as social communication.

In tests of executive functioning skills that, for example, help people solve problems, make decisions and manage emotions, researchers found that kids who spoke more than one language had a leg up on others.

Multilingual kids diagnosed with ASD were far more able to control their impulses than kids on the spectrum who spoke only their native language.

"We found both direct and indirect associations between multilingual status and perspective taking skills, such that multilingualism was associated with better perspective taking skills," the researchers wrote.

Possible explanations for this: Folks who speak more than one language are forced to gauge social cues to decide which one to use. Or their second-language knowledge comes with a higher ability to understand language itself, The Washington Post reported.

Researchers said multilingual kids' executive functioning could be sharpened by the need to choose the right language to use.

The study concluded that encouraging multilingualism at home could provide a "natural intervention" for some types of mental functioning.

The findings were published in the journal Autism Research.

Sources

  • The Washington Post, Feb. 8, 2026
  • Autism Research, November 2024

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted February 2025

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