Researchers from the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD) have received a 2025 Editor’s Award from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for their 2024 article published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (Language Section). The award was selected by Editor-in-Chief Julie Washington.
The Editor’s Award is presented annually by the editors-in-chief of ASHA journals (AJA, AJSLP, LSHSS, JSLHR, and Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups) to recognize the article that exemplifies the highest standards of research design, presentation, and scholarly impact.
The award-winning article, “Bilingualism Predicts Affective Theory of Mind in Autistic Adults,” was authored by Kaitlin Cummings, Rachel Greene, Paul Cernasov, Dang Dang Delia Kan, Julia Parish-Morris, Gabriel Dichter, and Jessica Kinard.
Using behavioral and eye-tracking methods with autistic and neurotypical adults, the study found that monolingual autistic participants showed lower affective theory of mind performance than bilingual autistic and neurotypical peers. Notably, bilingual autistic adults performed comparably to neurotypical participants, providing evidence for a bilingual advantage in affective theory of mind. The findings highlight the positive role of second-language experience in social-cognitive outcomes for autistic adults and underscore the importance of considering bilingualism in research and clinical practice.