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Reading Comprehension in Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role of Oral Language and Social Functioning

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Abstract

Reading comprehension is an area of difficulty for many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). According to the Simple View of Reading, word recognition and oral language are both important determinants of reading comprehension ability. We provide a novel test of this model in 100 adolescents with ASD of varying intellectual ability. Further, we explore whether reading comprehension is additionally influenced by individual differences in social behaviour and social cognition in ASD. Adolescents with ASD aged 14–16 years completed assessments indexing word recognition, oral language, reading comprehension, social behaviour and social cognition. Regression analyses show that both word recognition and oral language explain unique variance in reading comprehension. Further, measures of social behaviour and social cognition predict reading comprehension after controlling for the variance explained by word recognition and oral language. This indicates that word recognition, oral language and social impairments may constrain reading comprehension in ASD.

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Notes

  1. We thank an anonymous reviewer for noting that sentence and paragraph comprehension require somewhat different processes. In the WORD, a reading comprehension score is based on sentence and paragraph comprehension and there were four participants who obtained a comprehension score that reflected comprehension at the sentence but not paragraph level. With these participants removed, the results of regression analyses were identical except that the small/marginal effects of the Frith-Happé animations in models 3a (p for β = .05) and 3b (p for β < .05) became trends (p = .07 and .08 respectively).

  2. Performance IQ was not included in analyses as this variable was not central to our aims and hypotheses. However, given variability in our sample on this measure, and the potential role for nonverbal ability in predicting reading comprehension (Ricketts 2011), additional analyses were conducted with performance IQ included as a control variable at the first step of each regression model. Performance IQ did not predict significant unique variance in reading comprehension in any model.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the adolescents and families who took part in the study. The study was funded by the Medical Research Council (G0400065) and research at the Centre for Research in Autism and Education is supported by the Clothworkers’ Foundation and Pears Foundation. Gillian Baird, Emily Simonoff and Andrew Pickles contributed to the design of the overall study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR), University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Jessie Ricketts

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Catherine R. G. Jones

  3. MRC SGDP Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, London, UK

    Francesca Happé

  4. Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK

    Tony Charman

  5. Institute of Education, University of Reading, London Road Campus, 4 Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5EX, UK

    Jessie Ricketts

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  1. Jessie Ricketts
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  2. Catherine R. G. Jones
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  3. Francesca Happé
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  4. Tony Charman
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Correspondence to Jessie Ricketts.

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Ricketts, J., Jones, C.R.G., Happé, F. et al. Reading Comprehension in Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role of Oral Language and Social Functioning. J Autism Dev Disord 43, 807–816 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1619-4

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