• Children with Down Syndrome
A study comparing children with Down Syndrome being raised in bilingual homes with
monolingual children with Down syndrome found that the bilingual children performed at least as
well as the monolingual children with Down Syndrome (in their dominant language or language of
greater exposure) [4]. Therefore, negative effects of bilingualism were not found.
• Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
The vocabularies of English-Chinese bilingual children with ASD and monolingual children with
ASD were compared in a study [5]. The authors concluded that bilingualism did not have a negative
effect on the children’s language development, as both groups had similar vocabulary scores