multilingual babies

Mon May 9 18:07:52 UTC 2011

Dear all,
Just an addendum to Elena's message.  I will not repeat the points made by
my expert colleaguges, re: multilingualism not being a risk in itself.

With respect to Autism Spectrum Disorders, there is a very interesting
article (and thesis) by Kremer-Sadlik (see reference below).  It cleraly
shows that depriving children with ASD of multilingualism when they have to
function in a multilingual social context is actually detrimental in that it
increases their social isolation etc.
Kremer-Sadlik, T. (2005) To Be or Not to Be Bilingual: Autistic Children
from Multilingual Families. Cohen, K.T.McAlister, K. Rolstad & J. MacSwan
(Eds.) ISB4: Proceedings of the *4th International **Symposium on
Bilingualism.  *
With respect to ther sources of langauge delays, there has been many
publications on a) the fact that bilingualism does not cause SLI and that
SLI children benefit from bilingualism (Sharon's work, Paradis'work etc) and
b) a few studies re: the fact that bilingualism has no detrimental effect on
children with Down Syndrome etc (by Trudeau etc)...

Best,
Isabelle Barriere, PhD

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 1:17 PM, Elena Nicoladis <elenan at ualberta.ca> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> On the question of autism, keeping in mind Eve Clark's point that anecdotes
> are never data, we have some videotaped observations of three children with
> autism who were exposed to two languages (two French & English, one Tagalog
> & English). They varied considerably in terms of how much they could use
> language. The highest functioning child could use both languages fluently
> and even to tell stories, the lowest functioning child simply repeated words
> on occasion (in both French and English) and the third child was somewhere
> in the middle, but using both languages approximately equally well. All of
> these
> children had fairly equal exposure to both languages.
>
> Keeping in mind that we have no comparison to typically developing
> children, were these results generalizable to a larger population, they
> would suggest that autism affects language(s) at some sort of constant rate.
> So, bilingualism would not be seen as a "burden" on children with autism.
>
> Adults count languages and often assume that the higher the number to be
> acquired, the harder the task. I'm not convinced that children count
> languages-- they seem to be learning appropriate behaviour for contexts in
> which they regularly find themselves. Language choice is part of appropriate
> behaviour for a context.
>
> Elena
>
>
> Quoting "parisa Daftarifard" <pdaftaryfard at gmail.com>:
>
> Dear Miquel and all,
>>
>> I understand that the concept is very important to you and many parents
>> and
>> sometimes a must in certain situation. I guess what I explained creates a
>> little bit misunderstanding.
>>
>> What I said was that
>> 1.  Some children are at risk of many problems which leads to language
>> delay
>> (these problems would not show themselves very early)
>> 2.  We are not sure that who are those children
>> 3.  early simultaneous bilingualism might compound the situation for these
>> kids for unknown reasons
>> 4.  Expressive and fluent and creative language development in many
>> instances of bilingualism (based on experiences and papers) would requires
>> more time than usual kids unless one language is dominant and functional
>> and
>> the other just environmental.
>>
>> what I have seen is based on clinical study. although we do not have many
>> reports on language delay and bilingualism or autism, we cannot ignore
>> some
>> instances we see around.
>>
>> We are facing with *an innocent child* who is supposed to learn *an
>> instrument* through which he develops his cognition, ways of expression,
>> feeling and many other things. Some children, for unknown reasons, have
>> language delay. many bilinguals (most of them) will start speaking
>> fluently
>> and creatively later than their own age. Some of the children have
>> autistic
>> signs and many language and cognitive impairments. Who can say any formula
>> for these situations? All are mystery to us
>>
>> What I am suggesting is that we as parents should create the situation for
>> the kid so that he learns one language functionally first and then moves
>> to
>> another language. You may disagree! And I agree to disagree...
>>
>> I have seen many bilinguals who *have problems* and their parents became
>> concerned about their problems.  because of the same situation you
>> explained: mother was Iranian, Father English speaker, country Arab. The
>> kid
>> didn't speak at the age of three! What the doctor suggested was to stop
>> speaking other languages but one that is mostly dominant. Let's say that
>> the
>> kid has other factors as well.... How would you claim that you can
>> distinguish these kids from the rest when they are one month?! I hope I
>> express my meaning.
>>
>> I have seen many instances like this. My son was exposed to English
>> through
>> TV and my interaction, his environment and father's interaction was
>> Persian.
>> His language development is very slow, even we thought that he might have
>> had serious problems. I stopped English. Many instances like these exist
>> that have not developed into papers. finding no paper about similar
>> situation in an ISI journal cannot stop a researcher to ignore many other
>> instances that assure the risk.
>>
>> When it comes to *clinical situation*, we decide based on few instances. I
>> hope more research to be done regarding the benefits of bilingualism on
>> true
>> early bilingualism or simultaneous bilingualism which  would clearly
>> explain
>> what the situation is.
>>
>> It would be great if we can learn about ideas of  other specialists as
>> well
>> like psychologists, cognitive psychologists, those who are working with
>> problematic children.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> Parisa
>> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Miquel Serra <miquel.serra at ub.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Parisa
>>> Bilingulism is both, a situation to which a family has to (functionally)
>>> adapt and a project for the children to fullfill. It is not (only) a
>>> desire
>>> of parents or politicians (and academics).
>>> Adaptation depends on many factors  and circumstances. And a project
>>>  depends on long distance goals and means for them. If one is fucntional
>>> and
>>> has clear goals, there is no problem. But it is more important for the
>>> children to admire a culture than to be pressed to learn a distant
>>> language.
>>> Miquel Serra
>>> U Barcelona, Catalonia
>>>
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>>>
>>
>> --
>> Parisa Daftarifard
>> Phd Student of TEFL
>> Islamic Azad University of Science and Research
>>
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>>
>
>
> ***************************************
> Elena Nicoladis, PhD
> Department of Psychology
> University of Alberta
> P2-17 Biological Sciences Bdg.
> Edmonton AB
> T6G 2E9
> CANADA
>
> "Since all the sciences, and especially psychology, are still immersed in
> such tremendous realms of the uncertain and the unknown, the best that any
> individual scientist, especially any psychologist, can do seems to be to
> follow his own gleam and his own bent, however inadequate they may be. In
> the end, the only sure criterion is to have fun."
> E. C. Tolman, 1959
> ***************************************
>
>
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