Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Psychology; Psychology

Project Advisor 1

Sarah Dunphy-Lelii

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The proposed study will examine the effect of an early bilingual school environment on the set shifting abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). More specifically, it will evaluate how an English-French bilingual education program affects the set shifting abilities of children with ASD compared to a monolingual English education program. Set shifting will be measured by the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task both before and after the respective education programs. I hypothesize that there will be a main effect of both time point and education program on set shifting abilities such that (a) set shifting abilities will improve from pre-instruction to post-instruction, and (b) those who receive a bilingual education will outperform those who receive a monolingual education on set shifting ability overall. I also hypothesize that these main effects will be qualified by an interaction, such that (c) bilingual classroom instruction will result in better set shifting abilities particularly at post-instruction when compared to monolingual classroom instruction. If future results from this proposed study do indeed suggest that the proposed hypotheses are correct, it would be interesting to further explore what this would mean for a possible restructuring of current programs in place for the education of children with autism such as the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

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