CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO STRUGGLE TO FORM MENTAL IMAGES WHILE READING, MAY BENEFIT FROM THIS PROGRAM.

By Yolande LOFTUS, BA, LLB

Could a visualizing and verbalizing program be the answer for reading comprehension struggles? Children with autism spectrum disorder, especially those who struggle to form mental images while reading, may benefit from a program like the Nancibell® Visualizing and Verbalizing® Language Comprehension and Thinking program.

Hearing your child read a sentence for the first time is music to parental ears; realizing they did not understand what they read may tone down the elation. Acquiring reading comprehension skills is a challenge for many children. Research suggests, even though kids on the spectrum generally possess proficient word recognition skills, their reading comprehension is often impaired.

Reading comprehension and ASD

Randi et al. (2010) examined why reading for understanding is especially challenging for kids on the spectrum in a literature review titled: Teaching Children with Autism to Read for Meaning: Challenges and Possibilities. The review is introduced with mention of the fact that many autistic children are skilled at decoding, but comprehension skills may be lacking.

The authors conclude the review suggesting that reading comprehension is essential for everyone, but for those on the spectrum, it may be especially important as experience with written text may facilitate the acquisition of language skills (Randi et al., 2010). Prioritizing reading intervention for this population is crucial as research found over half of autistic children struggle with reading comprehension.

Specific challenges barring reading comprehension

With research (Nation et al., 2006) suggesting around 65% of school-age autistic children may have poor reading comprehension ability, the reason behind such comprehension difficulties should be examined.

Studies mention executive dysfunction, theory of mind, and weak central coherence as possible factors in poor reading comprehension amongst autistic children. In addition, relatively strong word recognition ability which, as previously mentioned, is often found in children on the spectrum, may mask phonological decoding difficulties. This could hamper the development of reading comprehension (Henderson et al., 2014).