Poster Session 6, 4:15 PM - 5:00 PM: Campus Center Auditorium [A15]

Presenter: Jennifer Morani

Faculty Sponsor: Megan C. Gross

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences

ABSTRACT

Families with autistic children face additional challenges with heritage language maintenance due to limited bilingual support services and advice from professionals (although not supported by research) to use only English at home (Ijalba, 2016; Kay-Raining Bird et al., 2012). This study examines parents' perspectives on an online group designed to bring their bilingual children together and explores how the children's language use relates to those perspectives. A mixed-method study was conducted with an ongoing virtual affinity group that has been meeting since Fall 2022. The group includes 3 neurodiverse bilingual (Spanish-English) boys, ages 11-14. Each session usually includes a check-in, language/literacy activities, and playing online games together. For the qualitative part of this study, the three mothers participated in a one-hour focus group and discussed the impact they felt the sessions had. They suggested adding a book club to encourage greater Spanish use, which was then incorporated into later sessions. The focus group was transcribed and will be analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006). For the quantitative part, the children's language use will be tracked over 3 sessions. Preliminary findings indicate that children who were raised in an environment that actively supported Spanish were most likely to use Spanish during the interactions. The mothers reported that the group had additional benefits, such as strong friendships being built. With further analysis, we hope to gain a deeper view of the parents' perspectives to guide the later sessions and develop future recommendations for families and providers.