The Evaluation of a Multiple Strategies Approach to Teach Social Inferential Reading Comprehension to Elementary Students with Autism.

purposeThe purpose of this research was to investigate whether an intervention combining explicit and visually cued instruction could help upper primary students with ASD improve their social inferential reading comprehension performance.

methodsA multiple probe design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on four children with ASD, aged 10 to 11 years. The study was conducted two to three times per week, each lasting 60 min, over ten weeks. The interventionist used think-alouds to explicitly model cognitive processes, error correction prompts to scaffold thinking, and a graphic organiser worksheet to simplify the social inferential reading comprehension process. All test probes used in the study were developed based on the 'Strange Stories' test by Happé (1994), and they were statistically equated using Rasch analysis. 

resultsResults indicated a mean improvement ranging from 40% to 56% between baseline and intervention phases across different students. Supporting this finding, the effect size calculations using PND, PEM, PAND and Tau-U suggested an effective intervention. To reject the null hypothesis of no treatment effect, a randomization test was conducted using the SCRT-R software, yielding a p-value of 0.008.

conclusionsWith appropriate support, children with ASD may be able to develop the complex reading skills needed to interpret the emotions and intentions of story characters. While the findings of this study are promising, they should be considered preliminary. This exploratory research provides a foundation for future studies to build upon and to further investigate effective interventions for improving social inferential reading comprehension in students with ASD.