Andreou Maria, Skrimpa Vasileia
Department of Speech and Language Therapy, University of Peloponnese, 24100 Kalamata, Greece.
Department of English, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne, 50931 Cologne, Germany.
Brain Sci. 2022 Aug 22;12(8):1113. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12081113.
Despite the fact that the urge to investigate bilingualism and neurodevelopmental disorders as continuous indices rather than categorical ones has been well-voiced among researchers with respect to research methodological approaches, in the recent literature, when it comes to examining language, cognitive skills and neurodivergent characteristics, it is still the case that the most prevalent view is the categorisation of adults or children into groups. In other words, there is a categorisation of individuals, e.g., monolingual vs. bilingual children or children with typical and atypical/non-typical/non-neurotypical development. We believe that this labelling is responsible for the conflicting results that we often come across in studies. The aim of this review is to bring to the surface the importance of individual differences through the study of relevant articles conducted in bilingual children and children with autism, who are ideal for this study. We concur with researchers who already do so, and we further suggest moving away from labels and instead shift towards the view that not everything is either white or black. We provide suggestions as to how this shift could be implemented in research, while mostly aiming at starting a discourse rather than offering a definite path.
尽管研究人员在研究方法上强烈呼吁将双语能力和神经发育障碍作为连续指标而非分类指标来进行研究，但在最近的文献中，在研究语言、认知技能和神经差异特征时，最普遍的观点仍然是将成年人或儿童分为不同的组。换句话说，存在对个体的分类，例如单语儿童与双语儿童，或发育正常与发育异常/非典型/非神经典型的儿童。我们认为，这种标签化是我们在研究中经常遇到相互矛盾的结果的原因。这篇综述的目的是通过研究双语儿童和自闭症儿童的相关文章，揭示个体差异的重要性，他们是这项研究的理想对象。我们赞同已经这样做的研究人员的观点，并且进一步建议摆脱标签，转而采用并非一切都是非黑即白的观点。我们就如何在研究中实现这种转变提供了建议，主要目的是引发讨论而非提供一条明确的路径。
