Variability of reading in children with Autism spectrum disorder : decoding, linguistic comprehension and reading strategy

Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a large variance in language and reading abilities. This study explored the relationship between linguistic comprehension and reading ability, and the reading strategies that ASD children adopt. Assessments of linguistic comprehension abilities at word-, sentence- and passage- levels as well as reading tasks of characters and words were given to 31 ASD children and 29 typically-developing children. Results showed that linguistic comprehension abilities moderately positively correlated with reading abilities in young ASD children but not in senior ASD children. Word comprehension ability predicted young ASD children’s reading ability, suggesting a unique contribution of word comprehension in reading performance. Analysis of reading errors found that the two most dominant reading errors were phonetic-related and unrelated errors for both ASD and typically-developing groups. Specifically, senior ASD children demonstrated more phonetic errors and fewer unrelated, visual and semantic errors than young ASD children, which implicated a stronger use of phonetic strategies than the young ASD children. The findings suggest that young ASD children are not able to employ an effective reading strategy, and thus their reading ability is mainly supported by word comprehension. They learn and adopt more phonetic strategies as they grow.