Verbal Working Memory and Semantic Processing in Hong Kong Bilingual School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Objectives This study compared the task performance between Hong Kong typical developing bilinguals and Hong Kong ASD bilinguals. The primary objective was to compare their verbal working memory in both semantically related and unrelated conditions for each group. We also investigated how the task performance differed between the ASD and TD groups, and between the children’s first and second languages. Methods Two subject populations participated in the study, a group of 22 Hong Kong ASD bilinguals and a group of 24 Hong Kong bilinguals with typical language development. All participants were studying at local primary schools from primary 3 to 6 and had intelligence within the normal range. This task is a 2(semantically-related vs semantically-unrelated) x2 (Chinese vs English) between subject design which incorporated the working memory and semantic task into one. Two lists of Chinese words, one containing 12 semantically related concrete nouns and another 12 semantically unrelated concrete nouns, were presented verbally to participants. They were asked to freely recall each list. The same procedure was repeated with two lists of English words. All the words given in either language were read in two syllables by the researcher. Results and Discussion The ASD bilinguals showed significantly poorer performance when recalling Chinese semantically-related words and English semantically-unrelated words. They also showed poorer performance in English semantically-related words, but not for Chinese semantically-unrelated words. This may suggest that word representations in the semantic network did not benefit ASD bilinguals due to their impaired ability to use context.