Reading comprehension in autism spectrum disorders: the role of oral language and social functioning.

Ricketts et al. (2013) looked at why teens with autism struggle with reading. They tested 100 high-schoolers with ASD. Each teen took word-reading, oral-language, and social-cognition tests. The team ran stats to see which skills predicted who understood the stories best.

All three pieces mattered. Word recognition, oral language, and social cognition each added unique points to reading scores. If any piece was weak, comprehension dropped. Social skills were not a side note—they were a core part of reading.

Giallo et al. (2014) repeated the idea with younger kids and got the same pattern: vocabulary, not just decoding, drives passage understanding.

Wang et al. (2026) took the finding and built an intervention. They taught social inferences with think-alouds and graphic organizers. Four autistic students jumped 40-56% on social-inference questions in only ten weeks.

Solis et al. (2025) looked inside real classrooms. They saw teachers spending under 5% of time on word study even though half the students scored low on word recognition—exactly the skill Jessie showed still matters in adolescence.

Micai et al. (2021) added a twist. Their teens with ASD did not shift reading strategies when the goal changed (study vs. fun). This suggests executive control works together with social cognition, not instead of it.

When you write a reading goal, check three boxes: Can the student decode? Do they understand the words? Can they read social cues? If any box is empty, teach it. Add quick social-inference drills or visual story maps. Track each piece separately and you will see comprehension rise.