Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often struggle to complete their education in unspecialized schools, even if their intellectual abilities would suggest differently (Manti et al., 2011). Our research, therefore, seeks to identify which factors may contribute to their academic outcome. Social skills have been identified to influence academic outcome significantly in neurotypical (NT) children (Meier et al., 2006) as well as in autistic children (Miller et al., 2017). However, this may be more pertinent in children on the spectrum as they tend to struggle with socio-emotional skills (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and to face social exclusion more often (Humphrey & Lewis, 2008) than their NT peers. Since children learn social skills for a major part in interaction with their parents (Ladd, 2005), but parents of autistic children were found to interact significantly less with their children than parents of typically developed children (Costa et al., 2019), autistic children may be exposed to an even more increased risk for academic underachievement. Furthermore, living in the multilingual environment of Luxembourg while having impaired language (pragmatic) skills (Miller et al., 2017), children on the spectrum may face additional challenges in academic achievement and social communication. Language barriers may impede their participation in class and understanding of academic content and thus hinder proper socialization and integration among their peers. The choice for language(s) could further influence children’s cognition since language was found to be tightly interrelated with cognitive concepts (Perlovsky, 2009a) and categorization of abstract information (Franklin et al., 2008). In addition, the degree of parents’ familiarity with the language used to interact with their child was found to play a role in parents’ ability to feel comfortable, authentic, and free to express themselves when interacting with their child (Franco et al., in preparation). Thus, the language used by parents with their children may affect the parent-child relationship, the overall family dynamic, and the mental health of family members (Jegatheesan, 2011). Language was also found to influence emotion expression abilities, such that languages have different levels of emotionality (Guttfreund 1990; Perlovsky, 2009b) and that our most intense emotions are often, and sometimes instinctively, expressed in our mother-tongue (Zentella, 1997). In line with this previous research, the present study investigates the interrelation between children with ASD’s socio-emotional and language abilities, their parent's mental health, and children’s academic outcome.

The study collects data from autistic children and age- and gender-matched neurotypical peers attending a mainstream elementary school in Luxembourg, one of their parents, and their class teacher. Children are tested with the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV; Wechsler & Naglieri, 2006) and the Sky Search sub-task from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-ch; Manly et al., 1999). In addition, children are asked to perform an adaptation of the Flanker Task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974) and watch a sad movie clip (extract from the movie The Lion King (1994), dying scene of the father), during which the researchers assess the child’s heart rate and emotional state using a wrist-worn heart rate monitor (Apple® watch series 6), a structured interview, and the self-assessment manikin for emotional valence (SAM; Bradley & Lang, 1994). Thereupon, an educational video clip (extract from the German television program Sendung mit der Maus by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln), available in the language of instruction of the child (German, French, or English), and questions about the clip’s content are used to assess the child’s memory. At last, the child answers to the Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ; Zurbriggen et al., 2017), as a proxy for social exclusion in their school environment. Meanwhile, parents answer questions about the family’s socio-demographics, their child’s ASD diagnosis, substance intake, and language skills. They then complete the parent forms of the Social Responsiveness Scale-2 (SRS-2; Constantino & Gruber, 2012), the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), the Emotion Regulation and Social Skills Questionnaire (ERSSQ; Beaumont & Sofronoff, 2008), the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children – Parent (AQC-P; Costa et al., 2017), the Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ; Zurbriggen et al., 2017), the Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS-SF; Driscoll & Pianta, 2011), the WHO Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5; World Health Organization, 1998), and the Major Depression Inventory (MDI; Bech, 1998). Teachers report on the child’s language proficiency and academic achievement and complete third-person/teacher reports of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), the Emotion Regulation and Social Skills Questionnaire (ERSSQ; Beaumont & Sofronoff, 2008), Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC; Costa et al., 2017), the Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ; Zurbriggen et al., 2017), and the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS-SF; Jerome et al., 2008).

We expect that findings will show that increased familiarity with the language of academic instruction will influence children’s academic outcome positively and that the use of additional languages will either have no or a positive effect on their academic outcome. We hypothesize that children’s degree of familiarity with a language influences their emotional abilities, which subsequently may have a moderating effect on the relationship between language familiarity and cognitive skills. This interrelation could influence the general relation between cognitive skills and academic outcome. We hypothesize that impairment of children’s socio-emotional skills negatively influences children’s academic outcome and perception of inclusion in the academic environment. We further expect to find that impaired parent mental health may have an impact on children’s academic outcome. Children’s impaired socio-emotional skills are further expected to negatively correlate with the parent's mental health and the parent-child relationship. Parents’ and children’s familiarity with the language used at home is expected to influence parent mental health and the parent-child relationship, and thus subsequently expected to influence children’s socio-emotional skills. Findings will be used for a better understanding of children with ASD’s needs for support in the academic environment and guidance of families living in a multilingual setting.

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596 Costa, A. P., Steffgen, G., & Vögele, C. (2019). The role of alexithymia in parent child interaction and in the emotional ability of children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 12(3), 458 468. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2061 Franco M., Steffgen, G., & Costa, A.P. (in preparation). Social skills in multilingual children with autism. Franklin, A., Drivonikou, G. V., Bevis, L., Davie, I. R. L., Kay, P., & Regier, T. (2008). Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults. PNAS, 105(9), 3221–3225. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0712286105 Guttfreund, D. G. (1990). Effects of language usage on the emotional experience of Spanish-English and English-Spanish bilinguals. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 58(5), 604–607. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.58.5.604 Humphrey, N., & Lewis, S. (2008). Make me normal' The views and experiences of pupils on the autistic spectrum in mainstream secondary schools. Autism, 12(1), 23-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361307085267 Jegatheesan, B. (2011). Multilingual development in children with autism: Perspectives of South Asian Muslim immigrant parents on raising a child with a communicative disorder in multilingual contexts. Bilingual Research Journal, 34(2), 185 200. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2011.597824 Ladd, G.W. (2005). Children’s peer relations and social competence: A century of progress. Yale University Press. Manti, E., Scholte, E. M., & Van Berckelaer-Onnes, I. A. (2011). Development of children with autism spectrum disorders in special needs education schools in the Netherlands: a three-year follow-up study. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 26(4), 411-427. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2011.597172 Meier, C. R., DiPerna, J. C., & Oster, M. M. (2006). Importance of social skills in the elementary grades. Education and treatment of children, 409–419. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42899893 Miller, L. E., Burke, J. D., Troyb, E., Knoch, K., Herlihy, L. E., & Fein, D. A. (2017). Preschool predictors of school-age academic achievement in autism spectrum disorder. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 31(2), 382-403. https://doi.org/10.1080/13854046.2016.1225665 Perlovsky, L. I. (2009a). Language and cognition. Neural Networks, 22(3), 247-257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2009.03.007 Perlovsky, L. I. (2009b). Language and emotions: emotional Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Neural Networks, 22(5-6), 518-526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2009.06.034 Zentella, A. (1997). Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Malden, MA: Blackwell.