The impact of exposure to additional languages and cognitive factors on narrative macrostructure in autistic and neurotypical children

This study adopts a twofold approach to examine how bilingual exposure and (socio-)cognitive factors influence narrative macrostructure in children. First, it investigated the impact of Exposure to Additional Languages (EtAL) on the narrative macrostructure of 90 autistic and 168 neurotypical children (ages 5-12), tested in their most proficient language, either English, French, (Swiss-)German, Italian or Spanish. Macrostructure was assessed through story structure, story complexity, and the production of Internal State Terms (IST), using a series of generalized mixed effects models controlling for age, sex, language skills, and non-verbal IQ. Among neurotypical children, greater EtAL predicted better story structure compared to peers with lower EtAL. No such effect was found in autistic children, suggesting that the potential benefits of EtAL may not extend equally across populations. Additionally, EtAL did not predict story complexity or IST-use in either group. Second, the study investigated the impact of Theory of Mind (ToM), working memory (WM), and metalinguistic awareness (MA) on macrostructure. While ToM and WM showed no significant effects, MA positively predicted story structure across groups. Findings indicate that dimensions of narrative macrostructure may benefit from exposure to multiple languages and MA, especially in neurotypical children. Results further support that, despite advice being provided to families of children with autism to abandon bilingualism, bilingual exposure is not detrimental to the communicative development of autistic children. Leveraging a large, neurodiverse sample and a continuous, hypothesis-driven measure of bilingualism, this study provides generalizable insights into how bilingualism and (socio-)cognitive factors influence narrative development across neurodiverse populations.