Efficacy of an Intervention to Enhance Reading Comprehension of Students With High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Students with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) represent a rapidly growing segment of the population of school-age children with special needs (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012). By definition, these students do not meet the criteria for intellectual disability, and they could learn normally in a regular classroom environment. However, acquiring what is perhaps the most important learning skill, reading with comprehension, is a challenge for them (Frith & Snowling, 1983;Snowling & Frith, 1986). Reading with comprehension is critical because students are expected to learn content by reading from textbooks in a variety of subject areas. In fact, succeeding in school is almost impossible for students who do not understand what they read (Chall & Jacobs, 2003).Unfortunately, well-known research-based interventions developed for students with ASD do not address reading comprehension problems. For example, because they primarily target preschoolers, the University of California, Los Angeles, Young Autism model (Lovaas & Smith, 2003) and the Picture Exchange Communication System (Bondy & Frost, 1994) focus on basic verbal communication skills rather than reading skills. Furthermore, although the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH) model has been developed for school-age children, its focus has been on basic reading skills rather than complex cognitive skills (Schopler, Lansing, & Waters, 1983). These basic skills are necessary, but they are not sufficient for comprehension. Reading comprehension involves organizing, integrating, and memorizing the information presented in the text. According to current theoretical models, a student understands a text by elaborating a coherent and reasonably complete mental representation of its content (W. Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005;van den Broek, White, Kendeou, & Carlson, 2009). Elaborating this kind of representation requires the use of cognitively advanced skills.The comprehension problems of students with highfunctioning ASD could be a consequence of their particular cognitive style. The central coherence theory (Frith, 1989;Frith & Happé, 1994) indeed suggests that, in contrast with the majority of their peers, students with ASD do not spontaneously perceive complex stimuli as meaningful, 533998R SEXXX10.

Teaching Reading Comprehension to Learners With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Predictors of Teacher Self‐efficacy and Outcome Expectancy

“…However, relevant reviews have identified a number of effective practices (Accardo, 2015;El Zein, Solis, Vaughn, & McCulley, 2014;Finnegan & Mazin, 2016). Identified effective practices include anaphoric cueing (Solis, McCulley, & Zein, 2013), compare and contrast diagrams (Carnahan & Williamson, 2013), cooperative learning (Kamps, Barbetta, Leonard, & Delquadri, 1994;Kamps, Leonard, Potucek, & Garrison-Harrell, 1995;Whalon & Hanline, 2008), direct/explicit instruction (Flores & Ganz, 2007;Flores & Ganz, 2009;Roux, Dion, Barrette, Dupere, & Fuchs, 2014), graphic organizers (Carnahan & Williamson, 2013), question generation (Hua et al, 2012), read-alouds (Mims, Hudson, & Browder, 2012), reciprocal questioning (Whalon & Hanline, 2008), story structure maps/character event maps (Stringfield, Luscre, & Gast, 2011;Williamson, Carnahan, Birri, & Swoboda, 2014), and systematic prompts (Mims et al, 2012). Of the instructional practices, only systematic prompts and visual supports, for example, graphic organizers and diagrams, have been identified as evidence based (Knight & Sartini, 2015).…”

Vocabulary and Main Idea Reading Intervention Using Text Choice to Improve Content Knowledge and Reading Comprehension of Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Many features of the interventions of these three recent investigations (Carnahan & Williamson, 2013;Williamson et al, 2015) align with findings of groupdesign intervention studies of students with ASD (O'Connor & Klein, 2004;Roux et al, 2015).…”

“…Common across all of the intervention studies is the instructional practices of modeling of cognitive processes, discussion of key concepts, and guided and independent practice (El Zein et al, 2014). This small yet growing body of literature supports the notion that students with ASD who have difficulty understanding expository text benefit from interventions that include visual supports, vocabulary instruction, main idea summarization strategies, discussion, and questioning (Asberg & Sandberg, 2010;Carnahan & Williamson, 2013;El Zein, Solis, & Lang, 2016;Flores & Ganz, 2007;Ganz & Flores, 2009;Knight, 2010;Roux et al, 2015;Solis et al, 2015;Stringfield et al, 2011;Van Riper, 2010;Whalon & Hanline, 2008).…”

Reading strategies for teaching reading skills in people with high-operating ASD

“…Por el contrario, otros estudios señalan que, en primer lugar, el aprendizaje es más efectivo cuando se realiza de forma individual y mediante programas de instrucciones directas, es decir, el término conocido en inglés como Direct Instruction (DI), ya que mejoran e implementan su comprensión. Para después pasar a combinar con el trabajo en grupos cooperativos con sus iguales en un aula ordinaria, de esta forma aprenderán estrategias para las relaciones sociales (Flores y Ganz, 2007;Flores, Nelson, Hinton, Franklin, T., Strozier, Terry, Franklin, 2013;Roux, Dion, Barrette, Dupéré y Fuchs, 2015;Shillingsburg, Bowen, Peterman y Gayman, 2015;Braun, Austin y Ledbetter-Cho, 2017;Head, Flores y Shippen, 2018).…”

“…En contraposición en otros estudios se obtienen mejores resultados si el alumnado con TEA de nivel 1 no está incluido en su aula ordinaria durante el aprendizaje de la lectura. Además, en otros estudios se presentan mejores resultados cuando al inicio del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lectura el/la alumno/a no se encuentra incluido en su aula ordinaria y a medida que progresa en este aprendizaje se incluye en grupos cooperativos de su aula de referencia (Kamps et al, 1994;Flores y Ganz, 2007;Ledford et al, 2008;Whalon et al, 2008;LaBarbera y Soto-Hinman, 2009;Flores et al, 2013;Roux et al, 2015;Shillingsburg et al, 2015;Braun et al, 2017;Head et al, 2018;Kim et al,2018).…”