Vocabulary Development for Readers with Autism

Reading expands the breadth of a reader’s vocabulary, which in turn contributes to reading efficiency.  In other words, the more you read the better reader you will become because a richer vocabulary gives more meaning to what is read. The opposite is also true, the less you read the poorer will be your vocabulary and the harder it will be for you to bring meaning to text. Normally, good readers learn most of their new words by using the context and their own experience of the world to add meaning. Often this meaning will initially be a gross approximation to the actual meaning of the word. However, after many encounters with the same word in a variety of contexts the reader will refine the depth of meaning and also see how meaning can change from one context to another.

Many children who have mastered decoding may have difficulty with reading comprehension, particularly after year four. This is because the language structures are much more complex, much of the vocabulary is unfamiliar, the types of texts differ from the more familiar narrative structures that they have been accustomed to in the lower grades, and the emphasis or focus shifts from decoding to comprehension. Often children with language deficits will struggle and appear to fall behind at this point. Reading becomes harder and they tend to avoid reading, which then contributes to poorer vocabulary through lack of exposure to new and unfamiliar words. This becomes a self-defeating cycle of poor reading comprehension and reading disengagement.

In addition, many children with high functioning autism have good to very good decoding skills and have a reasonable amount of reading practice. However, they have more difficulty connecting meaning to new words. They tend to concentrate on the detail and not so much on connected text such as; phrases, sentences, paragraphs and longer discourse. They often have language deficits that hinder this process and have difficulty making appropriate inferences. This may include their inability to develop text coherence, understand emotion and other character traits in narrative texts and have difficulties with executive functioning in working memory. These problems make it difficult for them to connect with prior knowledge, use the sentence and story context, and make appropriate inferences about the meanings of unknown words. Thus, they may read more but their vocabulary suffers as they progress through the grades. Usually these children are very intelligent and are able to cover their comprehension deficit but there will come a time when the texts that they are assigned become too difficult to adequately comprehend. What also makes detection difficult is the fact that they may appear to be reading fluently with expression but without adequate comprehension.

To help these students there are some very practical ideas that have been suggested by Susan Gately (2008 see article for more details). I have listed many of these ideas below but have structured the methods in terms of my COR Literacy Framework (See earlier Blog) (also see my earlier Blog series on Fluency).

Perceptual Level:

•     Visually cued instruction – helps focus on relevant parts of information
•     Graphics
•     Colour
•    Provide concrete and tangible information
•    Focus in relevant parts of the story or information

Cognitive Level:

•    Priming background knowledge
•    Picture walks
•  Visual maps
•    Understanding narrative text structure
•     Emotional thermometers

Metacognitive Level

•    Think-alouds
•      Reciprocal thinking (also refer to reciprocal teaching - Google)
•     Goal-structure-mapping
•     Decrease reliance on other prompts and increase independence

Details about these ideas can be found in:

Gately, S. E. (2008). Facilitating reading comprehension for students on the Autism Spectrum. Teaching Exceptional Children, 40(3), 40-45.

For a more detailed explanation of vocabulary difficulties see pages 83-84 in:

Woolley, G. (2007). A comprehension intervention for children with reading comprehension difficulties. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 12(1), 43-50.

A very informative article and book chapter related to problems with vocabulary for children with ASD:

Lopez, B., & Leekham, S. R. (2003). Do children with autism fail to process information in context? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44(2), 285-300.

Leekam, S. (2007). Language comprehension difficulties in Children with autism spectrum disorders. In C. Cain and J. Oakhill (Eds.), Children’s Comprehension Problems in Oral and Written Language: A Cognitive Perspective (pp. 104127), NY : Guilford Press.

Working Memory and Mental Imagery

• Mental imagery training enhances comprehension and is easy to teach
• Pronouns provide cohesion and coherence for text comprehension

I have just returned from recreation leave and read an interesting article entitled 'Effect of imagery training on children's comprehension of pronouns' by Francey and Cain, two researchers from Lancaster University, United Kingdom.  The researchers were investigating children with good and poor listening comprehension, and their ability to identify the antecedents of personal pronouns in individual sentences and also to select the most appropriate pronoun in a story close activity.

Normally, as they read,  good comprehenders will construct an integrated situation model of the perceived sentence and story meanings as a cohesive and coherent mental representation. What usually underpins this process is the resolution of pronouns with their antecedents in the same sentence or previous sentences. Pronouns such as 'he', 'she', 'they' or 'it' are strategic in integrating information within and between sentences. This, however, may require the reader to use extra mental resources to make inferences particularly in situations where 'he' refers to one of two protagonists in the previous sentence. Poor comprehenders often have considerable difficulty with this process and consequently have difficulty with text integration and comprehension of the text discourse.

Good readers tend to generate mental imagery as they read, which benefits their text recall and extends their capacity to hold information while processing text during reading. Poor readers, on the other hand, seldom generate mental imagery while reading. However, in my own research I have found that imagery training is relatively easy and enjoyable for struggling readers. It is assumed that by generating mental imagery during reading the reader is enabled to carry over complex ideas embedded within an image while, for example, decoding, connecting text propositions, making inferences across text and linking ideas to the reader's background  experiences. Thus, mental imagery enhances working memory efficiency by utilising the visual mode of working memory to enhance the ability of the poor comprehender to retain detailed information.

The research findings confirm the notion that poor comprehenders have difficulties with language comprehension apart from decoding. Most poor comprehenders have good decoding but have poor language comprehension and this can be evidenced in the fact that they have significantly more difficulty with pronoun resolution. The research demonstrates that minimal mental imagery training can improve the reading comprehension performance of students with poor comprehension. Another finding is that there is strong evidence to support the notion that pronouns play a crucial role in comprehension and the construction of a cohesive and coherent understanding of text ideas. The findings of this study also give some support for Paivio's (1991) Dual Coading theory of cognition.

Francey, G., Cain, K. (2015). Effect of imagery training on children’s comprehension of pronouns. Journal of Educational Research, 108 (1) p. 1 – 9.

Paivio, A. (1986). Mental representations: A dual-coding approach. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Comprehension and Philosophy in Schools

Philosophy deals with the most fundamental concepts about our existence and what it means to be human in this world. It considers ideas such as: knowledge, truth, meaning, justice, beauty, freedom and consciousness. Our understanding about these ideas influence many aspects of our lives. One of the best ways to involve children in philosophical discussion is to use good children's literature as a vehicle for philosophical discussions in the classroom.

I have included an excerpt from my book, 'Developing Literacy in the Primary Classroom' to show how philosophy, children's literacy and the COR literacy framework can be blended to develop deeper thinking and enquiry learning in the classroom.

"Literature circles and philosophical discussions will position the reader/viewer as a critical analyst who will look for and interpret meanings not just at the surface level but at deeper levels of cognition and metacognition.

Perceptual level: Observing and clarifying: Inferring and clarifying what has been suggested, making a distinction, asking an appropriate question, making an assumption, generalizing, and asking for a reason.

•    What is the author saying?

•    Do you think these points are the most important...?

•    What reasons do you think the author has for saying that?

•    Is the author saying that...?

•    Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't she/she saying ...?

•    What do think the author means by...?

•    Aren't you thinking that...?

•    Could you give me an example from your own experience of...?

Conceptual level: Forming an opinion, clarifying and justifying: Giving a reason, inferring, giving counter examples, and using criteria.

•    In light of what the story was about, do you think that...?

•    Why do you believe that what you said is correct?

•    Can you tell us why you think that?

•    Does anyone else have any questions for …?

•    Do you agree with his/her reasons?

•    Is that evidence good enough?

•    What evidence are you using to make that statement?

•    Is it possible that you and the other person are contradicting each other?

•    Can you try to see the issue from someone else’s point of view?

Metacognitive level: Evaluating individual and group responses: This involves personal reflection and evaluation, and also evaluating the responsiveness of the group.

•    Did we listen to each other well?

•    Did we respect each others’ opinions and ideas?

•    What have we learned from this discussion?

•    Did we use good reasons for what we have said?

•    What has it changed? (Self-correction, concepts, experience, 
attitude).

•    How did you feel about the discussion?

•    Is what you said now consistent with what you said before?"     (Woolley, 2014, p102)

Woolley, G. (2014). Developing literacy in the primary classroom. London: Sage.