An analysis of reading abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders

Nally, Amanda; Healy, Olive; Holloway, Jennifer; Lydon, Helena

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2017.12.002

Cited by 28 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Many studies have examined reading skills in ASD (Davidson and Weismer, 2014 ; Dynia et al, 2014 ; Bednarz et al, 2017 ; Nally et al, 2018 ; Micai et al, 2021 ). Among studies of reading skills and development in ASD, the majority paid particular attention to children's difficulties in reading comprehension, that is, their struggles to obtain meaning from written passages or texts (Nation et al, 2006 ; Brown et al, 2013 ; Ricketts et al, 2013 ; McIntyre et al, 2017a ; Solari et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word reading skills in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Vale

Fernandes²,

Cardoso³

2022

Front. Psychol.

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A growing body of research suggests that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at risk of reading and learning difficulties. However, there is mixed evidence on their weaknesses in different reading components, and little is known about how reading skills characterize in ASD. Thereby, the current study aimed to systematically review the research investigating this function in children with ASD. To this purpose, we reviewed 24 studies that compared (1) children with ASD and children with typical development (TD) in word and nonword reading performance, (2) children with ASD and normative data of word and nonword reading tests, and (3) the results obtained by children with ASD in word and nonword reading tests. Most of the comparisons (62%) contrasting the reading performance of children with ASD and children with TD did not find significant differences between groups in both word and nonword reading. However, all the comparisons that reported standardized results showed that children with ASD had scores that fell within population norms. Regarding the third comparison of interest, about 54% of the studies presented data for both word and nonword reading, but only one study tested the difference between them and showed that children with ASD had higher levels of word than of nonword reading. Despite these results, the heterogeneous and small samples do not allow to draw sound conclusions regarding the strategies that children with ASD use to read words. As consequence, the nature of reading difficulties presented by children with ASD are still unknown, requiring future research conducted with larger and well-characterized samples of ASD and TD, using homogeneous specific tasks designed to assess word reading strategies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word reading skills in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Vale

Fernandes²,

Cardoso³

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…Children with intellectual disabilities (ID) can experience significant delays in reading development, and many do not go on to acquire functional reading skills (Ratz and Lenhard, 2013). Failing to develop reading proficiency can have a negative impact on other academic, vocational and life skills (Nally et al, 2018), impeding a person's access to inclusive settings. Researchers have examined three research foci to date: (1) implementing pre-existing reading curricula for neurotypical children but with modifications to meet the needs of children with ID, (2) creating new comprehensive curricula and (3) creating targeted interventions for a specific skill difficulty.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Headsprout^® Early Reading for children with severe intellectual disabilities: a single blind randomised controlled trial

Grindle

Murray

Hastings

et al. 2021

Research in Spec Educ Needs

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Research evaluating phonics reading programs for children with severe intellectual disabilities (ID) is limited. The current study investigated whether using an online reading program (Headsprout â Early Reading; HER) as supplementary reading instruction for children with a severe ID leads to improvements in reading skills as compared to children not receiving this additional instruction. Fifty-five children from a special school were randomly allocated into the HER group or a waiting list control group. For six months, children in the intervention group received HER as supplementary instruction, whereas children in the control group received only reading as usual' teaching. Pre-and post-intervention tests on standardised reading measures were conducted. Analysis of data from outcome measures indicated that the HER group made improvements at post-intervention in comparison with the control group, with medium effect sizes on two domains from the main outcome measure. These results support the case for a larger research trial of HER for children with severe ID.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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“…To sum up, the profiles of DS and ASD reading skills show several commonalities, in particular: (a) both show relative strengths in word identification, in spite of a selective disadvantage in non-word reading [24][25][26][27][28]; (b) the relative advantage in word identification is not a guarantee that what is read is also understood for individuals with DS [11,18,29] and those with ASD [30][31][32][33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading for Comprehension in Individuals with Down Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development: Similar or Different Patterns of Ability?

2021

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Reading for meaning is one of the most important activities in school and everyday life. The simple view of reading (SVR) has been used as a framework for studies of reading comprehension in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). These tend to show difficulties in reading comprehension despite better developed reading accuracy. Reading comprehension difficulties are influenced by poor oral language. These difficulties are common in individuals with DS and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but they have never been compared directly. Moreover, the components of reading for comprehension have rarely been investigated in these populations: a better understanding of the nature of reading comprehension difficulties may inform both theory and practice. The aim of this study was to determine whether reading comprehension in the two populations is accounted for by the same component skills and to what extent the reading profile of the two atypical groups differs from that of typically developing children (TD). Fifteen individuals with DS (mean age = 22 years 4 months, SD = 5 years 2 months), 21 with ASD (mean age = 13 years 2 months, SD = 1 year 6 months), and 42 TD children (mean age = 8 years 1 month, SD = 7 months) participated and were assessed on measures of receptive vocabulary, text reading and listening comprehension, oral language comprehension, and reading accuracy. The results showed similar levels in word reading accuracy and in receptive vocabulary in all three groups. By contrast, individuals with DS and ASD showed poorer non-word reading and reading accuracy in context than TD children. Both atypical groups showed poorer listening and reading text comprehension compared to TD children. Reading for comprehension, investigated through a homograph reading accuracy task, showed a different pattern for individuals with DS with respect to the other two groups: they were less sensitive to meaning while reading. According to the SVR, the current results confirm that the two atypical groups have similar profiles that overlap with that of poor comprehenders in which poor oral language comprehension constrains reading for comprehension.

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An analysis of reading abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders

Cited by 28 publications

References 62 publications

Word reading skills in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Word reading skills in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Headsprout^® Early Reading for children with severe intellectual disabilities: a single blind randomised controlled trial

Reading for Comprehension in Individuals with Down Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development: Similar or Different Patterns of Ability?

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An analysis of reading abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders

Cited by 28 publications

References 62 publications

Word reading skills in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Word reading skills in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review

Headsprout® Early Reading for children with severe intellectual disabilities: a single blind randomised controlled trial

Reading for Comprehension in Individuals with Down Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development: Similar or Different Patterns of Ability?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Headsprout^® Early Reading for children with severe intellectual disabilities: a single blind randomised controlled trial