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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Clinical research: Children with autism struggle to read

by  /  29 November 2013
A young girl is standing up and holding a book close to her face.
Detail oriented: Children with autism who have poor social skills tend to score high on a test that gauges knowledge of the alphabet.

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THIS ARTICLE IS MORE THAN FIVE YEARS OLD

This article is more than five years old. Autism research — and science in general — is constantly evolving, so older articles may contain information or theories that have been reevaluated since their original publication date.

Around 5 years of age, most children with autism are better at sounding out words than they are at understanding them, according to a study published in September in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders1.

The children who had the best scores on intelligence tests and the best language at 2.5 years of age are the most skilled at reading three years later, the study also found.

Children who have good reading skills perform well in school and in social settings2. Because of this, children with autism should receive early interventions to improve their reading comprehension, the researchers say.

The new study looked at 94 children with autism at age 2.5 and then again at age 5.5 years. The children took a battery of tests to gauge their cognitive, language and reading abilities at both ages.

The researchers tested reading ability using the Test of Early Reading Ability, Third ed., which is divided into three measures. The ‘alphabet measure’ tests whether children can recognize letters and their respective sounds — either alone or in syllables. The ‘conventions measure’ tests knowledge of language rules, such as spelling and punctuation, and the ‘comprehension measure’ looks at a child’s understanding of words and sentences.

Overall, children with autism score in the normal range of ability. However, they score lower than average on language conventions and reading comprehension and slightly above the population average on knowledge of the alphabet.

Of the 94 children, 58 are better at decoding words than they are at understanding them. Another 7 have good reading scores overall, whereas the remaining 29 have poor reading ability across all measures.

Interestingly, the children who perform the best on the alphabet component of the reading test tend to have the lowest social skills. This may be because these children tend to focus on detail at the expense of the bigger picture, the researchers say.

References:

1: Davidson M.M. and S. Ellis Weismer J. Autism Dev. Disord. Epub ahead of print (2013) PubMed

2: Schoon I. et al. Pediatrics 125, e459-466 (2010) PubMed