Investigating the Use of World Knowledge During On-line Comprehension in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Bassett-Gunter et al. (2017) watched adults with autism read short stories on a screen.

The stories held tiny world-knowledge errors like "the thief used a spoon to pick the lock."

Eye-tracking cameras timed how fast readers spotted the odd word.

Adults with autism caught obvious theme errors just as fast as typical peers.

They were slower only when the error needed quick world-knowledge checks.

The delay was milliseconds, but it showed up on every eye trace.

Espín-Tello et al. (2017) saw the same slow-down in school kids answering inference questions.

Both studies used eye-tracking and found intact accuracy with extra time.

Laposa et al. (2017) tested children with ambiguous sentences and also saw mixed results.

Together the papers say speed, not skill, differs across ages in ASD readers.

Fleury et al. (2018) looked long-term and found reading levels stay behind peers.

That seems to clash, but P et al. measured overall growth while L et al. caught moment-by-moment processing.

Both can be true: small online delays may add up to larger gaps over years.

When you run reading programs, give adult clients a beat longer to judge odd facts.

Pause after implausible lines and ask, "Does that make sense?"

The extra second lets world knowledge kick in and keeps comprehension intact.