Hi Jonah,
Thanks for your question. Autism is a condition that is characterized by persistent difficulties with social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors, as defined by the DSM-5. While autism can co-occur with intellectual disability or other learning differences that may impact children’s ability to learn foundational reading skills, autism would more directly potentially impact how students are able to comprehend text. Its full name, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), better implies that the magnitude of these challenges can vary significantly from one person to the next. That is to say, asking how best to teach an Autistic person (why am I using identity-first language?, also see Taboas et al., 2023) how to read is a bit like asking how to cook dinner for someone with a dietary restriction without knowing whether the restriction is related to gluten, dairy, nuts, or something else. Until you know what the learner is successful with and what the learner still needs support with, the label doesn’t guide the plan. Therefore, I’ll do my best to reach the heart of your question, but this unfortunately may hold little relevance to the individuality of each of your students. If they are being seen by a specialist or have been evaluated by your school’s Special Education team, you may want to consult with your school psychologist, speech-language pathologist (SLP), and/or other specialists as appropriate for help determining your student’s individual needs.
A core characteristic of autism is a difference in social communication. In everyday interactions, this may present as misinterpreting social cues, such as facial expressions, or understanding unstated rules of social etiquette or norms. In texts, character feelings and motivations are rarely stated any more explicitly than in real life. Autistic children may not anticipate how a sequence of events would affect a character, or pick up on how the character is feeling based on the author’s description. They may be able to answer detail-oriented questions or sequence the main parts of the text, but struggle to infer, or “read between the lines.” Take this small excerpt:
When Liam walked into the cafeteria, the chatter at his table stopped.
While the words and sequence may be simple enough to follow, it is written with the assumption that the reader will understand that the chatter at the table suddenly ceasing implies there is a shared feeling of discomfort that the group of students feels about Liam. Whether it is annoyance, anger, pity, or another feeling would need to be contextualized by the events that preceded this cafeteria scene. Inference questions such as these that necessitate readers to use their understanding of social cues and dynamics may be challenging for Autistic readers.
Autistic readers may also interpret language literally. Use of sarcasm, indirect language (e.g., saying “We’ll see,” instead of “Probably not”), and expressions such as “back to the drawing board” might be confusing.
So, while many students require support to understand complex texts, the things Autistic readers struggle with are often unique to their disorder. A teacher who is not familiar with these differences may attempt to provide support with challenging vocabulary or complex sentence syntax. However, such scaffolds are unlikely to be targeting the support an Autistic reader needs to understand the text.
It’s important for teachers to note that autism is also commonly associated with executive functioning deficits, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, suppressing distracting thoughts, and organization. These cognitive regulation skills, which help readers focus, shift between ideas, hold information in mind, and monitor their understanding, are essential for constructing meaning during reading. When these skills are weak, they may understand individual words or sentences, but struggle to integrate ideas, track a narrative plot, or recognize when their comprehension has broken down.
Because of this, explicit scaffolds that reduce executive functioning demands can be especially beneficial. Strategies such as activating background knowledge prior to reading and previewing the organizational structure of texts can help students’ mental organization at the onset of the reading task. During reading, prompting students to monitor their comprehension, annotate key information, use graphic organizers, and pause to restate key information can help support their working memory and attention. After reading, asking students to summarize information, answer questions, or write about the text can be helpful for students to consolidate, organize, and retain the information that they read. These supports can help students’ comprehension not only in the moment, but also help them gradually internalize the self-regulation strategies that they can transfer across texts and subjects as well.
I hope these ideas help give you a good starting place!
