Comprehension of passive voice in autistic German- and French-speaking children: No negative effects of bilingualism
DOKPE
- Zuban, Yulia ORCID University of Fribourg
- Baumeister, Franziska ORCID University of Fribourg
- Wolfer, Pauline University of Fribourg
- Durrleman, Stephanie University of Fribourg
- 2026
Published in:
- Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. - Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2026, p. 1-12
English
The study examines the influence of bilingual experience, age and verbal working memory
(WM) on the comprehension of passive voice by 116 typically developing (TD) and 65 autistic
children aged 3 to 13, who were tested in their societal languages, German or French. Some
children were mainly exposed to the societal language while some children were also exposed to
other languages. We adopt a continuous approach to bilingual experience and operationalize it
as a balance of cumulative exposure, measured through entropy scores. We found that the
comprehension of passive voice improved with age in both groups, and higher verbal WM
predicted better performance in autistic but not TD children. Although autistic children were
less accurate than TD children, bilingual experience did not contribute to the differences
between the two groups. These findings suggest that bilingualism has no detrimental effect on
the comprehension of complex syntactic structures in autistic children.
(WM) on the comprehension of passive voice by 116 typically developing (TD) and 65 autistic
children aged 3 to 13, who were tested in their societal languages, German or French. Some
children were mainly exposed to the societal language while some children were also exposed to
other languages. We adopt a continuous approach to bilingual experience and operationalize it
as a balance of cumulative exposure, measured through entropy scores. We found that the
comprehension of passive voice improved with age in both groups, and higher verbal WM
predicted better performance in autistic but not TD children. Although autistic children were
less accurate than TD children, bilingual experience did not contribute to the differences
between the two groups. These findings suggest that bilingualism has no detrimental effect on
the comprehension of complex syntactic structures in autistic children.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences et de médecine
- Department
- Section de médecine
- Language
-
- English
- Other electronic version
- License
-
CC BY
- Open access status
- hybrid
- Identifiers
-
- DOI 10.1017/S1366728926101242
- ISSN 1366-7289
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/336302
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