Longitudinal investigation of bilingualism, executive function, and brain organization in autism - Project Summary Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with marked heterogeneity with respect to the development of executive function (EF) abilities. In the United States, 12 million children primarily speak a language other than English in the home, suggesting that 1 in 4 children with ASD are being raised in a bilingual environment. Individuals who speak two languages fluently sometimes perform better on tasks of EF than monolingual individuals. Despite the potential advantages that bilingualism may confer, clinical practitioners commonly advise against providing a bilingual environment for children with developmental disabilities. The rationale for this recommendation is that concentrating on one language should better support a child’s language development. Yet, a growing body of work suggests there are no negative effects of being raised in a bilingual environment for children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Preliminary evidence even suggests possible associations between bilingualism and enhanced EF in some children with ASD. Still, there is little research specific to bilingualism in children with ASD, leaving clinicians struggling to develop informed recommendations for families of children with the disorder. Currently, there is no developmental cognitive neuroscience research specific to bilingualism in ASD during the critical period of early adolescence, when EF abilities and the brain networks supporting them are rapidly maturing. This project will capitalize on data collected as part of an ongoing project (R21HD111805) to determine longitudinal associations between bilingualism, EF, and brain organization in ASD using behavioral and informant-report assessments combined with state-of-the-art multimodal neuroimaging approaches. We will collect two additional time points of data from 150 age-, IQ-, sex-, SES-, pubertal stage-, and ASD-severity matched monolingual and bilingual children with ASD who were between the ages of 8-12 at initial study enrollment and will be between 12-16 at study completion. The project aims to 1) determine longitudinal associations between bilingualism and EF abilities in children with ASD using an informant-report indicator of EF, a performance-based laboratory task developed by our lab, and NIH Toolbox Tasks of EF, 2) to determine the longitudinal impact of bilingualism on brain functional organization underlying EF abilities in children with ASD using both task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging and resting-state functional connectivity dynamics, and 3) to determine the longitudinal impact of bilingualism on brain structural organization underlying EF abilities in children with ASD using diffusion weighted imaging. The project will be conducted in Los Angeles, where nearly 60% of the population is bilingual. This research addresses the strategic plan from the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee that aspires to understand alterations in brain function in ASD to better enable the development of targeted interventions and societal accommodations that improve quality of life for individuals on the spectrum.
