The Scope and Nature of Reading Comprehension Impairments in School-Aged Children with Higher-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.
For higher-functioning students with ASD, poor reading comprehension is driven by underlying oral language weaknesses—target language skills, not just decoding.
01Research in Context
What this study did
McIntyre et al. (2017) compared reading and language scores of higher-functioning students with autism to classmates with ADHD and typical development.
They used standard reading tests and statistical models to see if autism severity explained poor reading through weak oral language.
What they found
Students with HFASD scored lower than both ADHD and typical peers on reading and language tasks.
Autism symptom severity predicted reading problems, but only because it hurt oral language first.
How this fits with other research
Fleury et al. (2018) followed kids for 30 months and found the same gap stays put—growth rate is normal, but starting point is low.
Carter et al. (2013) showed that for HFASD students syntax matters for literacy, while semantics does not—matching the idea that basic language structure, not deeper meaning, is the weak link.
Plaisted et al. (2006) first showed wide scatter in ASD reading; McIntyre et al. (2017) now explains that scatter is driven by oral language, not decoding.
Why it matters
If a higher-functioning student decodes well but fails comprehension questions, probe oral language—vocabulary, sentence structure, verbal memory—before re-teaching phonics.
Add brief language screens to your reading assessments and pair comprehension goals with language goals.
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Join Free →Add a quick oral language probe (naming synonyms, repeating sentences) before your next reading session—if language lags, fold vocabulary or syntax drills into comprehension work.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study of 8-16-year-olds was designed to test the hypothesis that reading comprehension impairments are part of the social communication phenotype for many higher-functioning students with autism spectrum disorder (HFASD). Students with HFASD (n = 81) were compared to those with high attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptomatology (ADHD; n = 39), or typical development (TD; n = 44), on a comprehensive battery of oral language, word recognition, and reading comprehension measures. Results indicated that students with HFASD performed significantly lower on the majority of the reading and language tasks as compared to TD and ADHD groups. Structural equation models suggested that greater ASD symptomatology was related to poorer reading comprehension outcomes; further analyses suggested that this relation was mediated by oral language skills.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2017 · doi:10.1007/s10803-017-3209-y