Reading in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Literature Review

Area of Science:

• Neurodevelopmental disorders
• Developmental psychology
• Educational psychology

Background:

• Increasing prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses in school-aged children.
• Need to understand diverse reading abilities within the ASD population.
• Growing interest in effective reading interventions for children with ASD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review literature on reading abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• To assess the effectiveness of reported intervention strategies for improving reading skills in individuals with ASD.
• To identify distinct reading profiles among children diagnosed with ASD.

Main Methods:

• Literature search conducted in Web of Science and PubMed databases.
• Keywords used: 'autism' AND 'read*', with a publication filter from 2010-2015.
• Included studies focused on describing reading abilities or interventions for ASD; review articles were excluded.

Main Results:

• A total of 58 articles were selected for review.
• 27 articles focused on describing reading abilities in individuals with ASD.
• 31 articles reported on intervention procedures for reading development in ASD.

Conclusions:

• Direct comparisons between studies were challenging due to varying inclusion criteria.
• Lack of detailed information on intervention processes limited definitive conclusions.
• Tentative conclusions are proposed, emphasizing the need for further research and standardized methodologies.