Developing Social Knowledge to Support Reading Comprehension in Elementary Students With ASD

Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience associated difficulties in reading comprehension. This may be due to the social nature of fictional texts, which require the reader to interpret what characters are thinking and feeling and to make inferences about the cause and effect between events in a story. This paper outlines strategies that teachers can use to assist their learners with ASD in reading comprehension, including activating social background knowledge, encouraging series and familiar genres, identifying and teaching figurative language, and using graphic organizers to support perspective-taking. These strategies are tailored to the social phenotype of children with ASD to best address the underlying difficulties that may be impeding their reading comprehension.