Expert: James Michael Roan - 12/14/2007

Question
What programs help with comprehension? Our autistic children are learning to read but comprehension lags way behind decoding.

Answer
Hi Allison;

That's because children on the spectrum are generally very low in two important areas of cognition: Executive functions and abstract thinking.

Executive functions include attention, organization and planning, and working memory. A low working memory impairs all these functions. Working memory is a buffer where information is kept to be "worked on." Any word in a sentence gets its meaning from the words around it, and every sentence gets its meaning based on the paragraph and overall narrative (see: abstract thinking below). If the buffer is small, then the operations that be performed on the information therein including meaning are very limited.

Abstract thinking versus concrete thinking is generally very low in children on the spectrum. It can be indirectly estimated based on degree of literal or concrete thinking and the degree of difficulty with change and transitions a particular child has. Abstract thinking is necessary for conceptual thinking or "hypothetical thinking," which is required for developing a hypothesis about where a narrative is headed in order to correctly interpret the meaning of words and paragraphs.

In sum, for children on the spectrum low executive functions coupled with low abstract/conceptual thinking comprehension will be extremely limited. Books with good pictures that help tell the story will work well. They need those visual clues to replace contextual (language based) cues.

They are good at decoding because it is a relatively concrete process of associating letters with sounds and combinations of letters with blends.

I hope I haven't muddied the waters too much.

Regards,
James