Teaching Children with Autism to Read for Meaning: Challenges and Possibilities

Abstract

The purpose of this literature review is to examine what makes reading for understanding especially challenging for children on the autism spectrum, most of whom are skilled at decoding and less skilled at comprehension. This paper first summarizes the research on reading comprehension with a focus on the cognitive skills and processes that are involved in gaining meaning from text and then reviews studies of reading comprehension deficits in children on the spectrum. The paper concludes with a review of reading comprehension interventions for children on the spectrum. These children can especially benefit from interventions addressing particular cognitive processes, such as locating antecedent events, generating and answering questions, locating referents, and rereading to repair understanding.

Psycho-educational Diagnostic Evaluation and Profiling of Learning Disabilities

“…His RCA of 6 years 9 months was 2 years behind his CA; his LCA of 6 years 1 month, about 2 years 10 months behind his CA. These results are consistent with previous studies (e.g., Grigorenko et al, 2003;Nation et al, 2006;Randi et al, 2010) that children with hyperexia have impaired comprehension skills. One explanation for James' impaired comprehension could be due to his low intellectual ability with MA of 7 years 11 months, a year lagging behind his CA.…”

The role of the executive functions in school achievement at the end of Grade 1

“…These abilities are clearly related to socioaffective functioning and social cognition. In this regard, it is recognized that children with a major social impairment, such as autism, have major difficulties with these more ''social'' aspects of reading and writing (Randi, Newman, & Grigorenko, 2010). From this perspective, then, it stands to reason that a less severe socioaffective problem, such as a high level of anger-aggression, could affect certain social cognition abilities that are useful in reading.…”

Executive Dysfunctions, Reading Disabilities and Speech-Language Pathology Evaluation

“…Furthermore, EFs influence theory of mind or the appreciation that others know, want, and feel things as we do. They are closely related to theory of mind neurologically and developmentally, and both are deficient in individuals with ASD [35,56], as is their social-pragmatic language, play development and reading comprehension [42,57,58,59]. …”