Slightly over 1 in 5 children in the United States are growing up in a household that speaks a language other
than English. For these children, developing bilingual skills will allow them to communicate both with family
members who have limited English skills and with English-speaking teachers and peers. However, for children
with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is limited research about how to facilitate their bilingual
development. Professionals and parents have often assumed that learning two languages would be too
challenging, especially for children with minimal spoken language skills. While several studies over the past
decade have demonstrated that bilingual exposure is not detrimental for language development in children with
ASD, these studies have focused mostly on the acquisition of English rather than examining factors that
promote development of both languages. Furthermore, bilingual studies have generally excluded children with
minimal/low verbal skills. The proposed sequential mixed-methods project places a new emphasis on
variability within the bilingual experiences of children with ASD and their families. It seeks to identify factors
associated with children’s skills in both languages, as well as their social-cognitive skills such as perspective-
taking and cognitive flexibility. The quantitative phase will include 60 Spanish-speaking families with children
with ASD (ages 4-6), including children who are minimally verbal. The first aim is to characterize sources of
variation in the types of bilingual language environments experienced by children with ASD (e.g., different
languages from caregivers vs. therapists; different languages from different caregivers; code-switching by
bilingual caregivers; changes in language choices over time). The second aim is to examine predictors of
children’s dual-language communication and social-cognitive skills, including the role of quantity and contexts
of Spanish exposure. In a qualitative phase conducted with a subset of 30 families, the third aim is to interpret
the quantitative findings in reference to family perspectives, priorities, experiences, and challenges with
language choices and support services. The long-term goal of this work is to collaborate with families and
service providers to develop interventions that support bilingual families and promote the linguistic and social-
cognitive development of children across the autism spectrum. This career development proposal includes an
expert team of mentors from Psychology, Communication Disorders, and Public Health. The training goals
focus on conducting research with minimally verbal children with ASD, mixed methods, and using community-
based participatory research to develop and evaluate interventions. The research aims and training goals of
this career development award reflect current priorities in the strategic plan of the NIDCD for Voice, Speech,
and Language, including Improving Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention in Understudied Populations
(Priority Area 3) and Improving Outcomes for Human Communication through community-based research
(Priority Area 4).