Bilingualism Effects on Cognition in Autistic Children Are Not All-or-Nothing: The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Intellectual Skills in Bilingual Autistic Children

Children with autism often display discrepancies in their intellectual functioning, with nonverbal skills frequently being more developed than verbal. Compared to monolingual autistic children, however, much less is known about how bilingualism affects intelligence in autism. The current study examined the intelligence profiles of 146 bilingual and 170 age- and gender-matched monolingual children with autism (6-17 years) using the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Third Edition, by tracking cluster profiles across children and by modeling verbal and nonverbal IQ performance in each cluster as a function of language experience (monolinguals vs bilinguals), socioeconomic status, and age. The results reveal that socioeconomic status, operationalized as mother's years of education, mediated by bilingualism was strongly related to autistic children's intelligence. Low-socioeconomic status bilingual autistic children exhibited better performance than their monolingual peers across both the verbal and nonverbal intelligence subtests. However, the difference found in the intelligence profiles between monolinguals and bilinguals belonging to high-socioeconomic status was limited to the Comprehension Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children test, with high-socioeconomic status monolingual autistic children outperforming their bilingual peers. The findings highlight the importance of investigating bilingualism effects in relation to socioeconomic status in autism.