Autism and Reading Part II: Lessons to be Learned from Special Kids

Tim Shanahan

In my previous blog, I explored what is known about the decoding abilities of students plagued with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Here we’ll explore what is known about their reading comprehension abilities – both with an eye towards providing helpful guidance to teachers who work with these children and to consider what that work has to say about reading comprehension generally.

In that earlier piece, I quoted extensively from a letter from Emily Iland, an expert on autism. She, based on her extensive personal experience, described various special reading comprehension problems kids with ASD may face. These problems are common to many kids with ASD but not so prevalent with everyone else.

Nevertheless, if there are certain skills or types of information with which these students struggle, other kids may evidence those problems too – just not as severely or consistently.

One common finding is that kids on the autism spectrum usually comprehend less well than they decode, and this is true whether or not they have decoding difficulties (Brown, et al., 2012; Henderson, Clarke, & Snowling, 2014; McClain, et al., 2021; Nation & Norbury, 2005; Nicolosi & Dillenburger, 2024; Randi, Newman, & Grigorenko, 2010 ; Sorenson, et al., 2021 ; Sotáková & Kucharská, 2017). Admittedly, there are also kids on the spectrum who appear to comprehend well. Though, having read much of the recent literature, I doubt that typical comprehension tests are sufficiently sensitive to identify these kids’ problems.

Most of the reading research on kids with ASD has been of the single subject variety (McClain, et al., 2021). In these studies, researchers intervene usually with 1-3 students to see if an instructional approach works. Typically, these studies have been of short duration and with measures of dubious reliability. Such studies are better used to guide future research than instruction.

It is also worth noting that there are several studies that treat ASD like any other reading disability, simply increasing the dosage or intensity of what appears to work reasonably well with everyone else (Head, 2023; Kim, 2023; Kim, et al., 2024; Marshall & Myers, 2021; O’Neil, 2024; Ricketts, 2011; Turner, Remington, & Hill, 2017). Such studies evaluate whether shared reading, story mapping, direct instruction, intensive review, increased scaffolding, graphic organizers and such can work with ASD, if delivered under positive circumstances (e.g., one-on-one teaching) or with increased dosage. Generally, these studies report positive outcomes. What their success would be like in regular classroom settings is anyone’s guess. In any event, there appear to be learning pay offs from intensified or improved delivery of typical comprehension instruction.  

However, ASD poses some special problems that might require more than improved “business as usual” routines.  

Most prominent among these possibilities...

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