Writing Self-Concept, Text Engagement, and Writing Practices Across Contexts: Comparisons Between School-Age Children on the Autism Spectrum and Their Non-Autistic Peers.

PURPOSE: Autistic children demonstrate highly variable written language skills. Existing research has focused on examining autistic children's performance on direct assessments of written language. In contrast, few studies have sought to understand how autistic children conceptualize their writing abilities or engage with writing across different contexts compared to non-autistic peers. METHODS: This study used a researcher-designed questionnaire to examine writing self-concept, text engagement with different writing activities, and writing practices and beliefs across school and non-school contexts in school-age (10-18 years old) autistic children compared to their non-autistic peers. Data analysis approaches included "multiple indicators, multiple causes" (MIMIC) modeling; correlational and multiple regression analysis; non-parametric Mann-Whitney U tests; and principal components analysis. RESULTS: Groups did not differ in their writing self-concept ratings. Furthermore, both groups engaged with a variety of different writing activities to a similar extent except for text messages being lower for the autistic group. Five components were extracted via principal components analysis on items related to writing practices and beliefs across contexts; groups did not differ across the components. Overall, the non-autistic group showed more consistent relationships between writing self-concept as well as writing practices and beliefs with performance on a narrative writing task when compared to the autistic group. CONCLUSION: Results offer a preliminary understanding into how autistic children engage with writing across contexts for a variety of purposes when compared to their non-autistic peers and offer implications for continued research and educational practice.

Educational Interventions for Children and Youth with Autism: A 40-Year Perspective.

Commemorating the 40 th anniversary of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) III, the purpose of this commentary is to describe school-based and school-relevant interventions and instructional approaches for children and youth with autism that have been developed and employed during that time period. The commentary begins with a brief description of foundational research that provides an historical context. Research themes shaped by science, ethics, social policy, and the changes in the DSM provide an organization for describing the evolution of intervention and instructional practices over the four previous decades. The commentary concludes with a discussion of school-contextual variables that influence implementation and the promise of the "iSciences" for closing the research to practice gap in the future.

Stability of Literacy Profiles of Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Associations With Stakeholder Perceptions of Appropriate High School Support Needs.

Purpose For many individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), postsecondary outcomes are poor. This may be due to insufficient academic supports, particularly with regard to literacy skills, during high school. More information is needed about skill profiles so that we can better differentiate support for students with varying social, communication, cognitive, and academic proficiency levels. This study was designed to (a) identify unique literacy profiles of high school students with ASD, (b) assess profile stability over time, (c) identify predictors of profile membership, and (d) analyze stakeholder reports of required school support intensity. Method Participants were a diverse sample of high school students with ASD, 14-21 years old (N = 544), their parents, and their teachers who participated in a randomized controlled trial of a comprehensive treatment model for high school students with ASD. Standardized measures were administered to assess nonverbal IQ, autism symptomatology, language/adaptive communication, reading comprehension, academic knowledge, and parent/teacher report of school support needs intensity. Latent transition analysis was conducted to examine sample heterogeneity and to explore the stability of the profiles. Associations between profiles and reports of support intensity were examined. Results Four literacy profiles were identified that were stable over 2 years: Emergent Literacy/Comprehensive Support, Low Literacy/Intensive Support, Average Literacy/Moderate Support, and Average Literacy/Limited Support. Parent and teacher reports of school support intensity generally aligned with the profiles. Conclusions These analyses provide insight into the diverse literacy and support needs in ASD. Implications for practice and the role of speech-language pathologists in assessment and intervention are discussed. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13495119.

Evidence-Based Practices for Children, Youth, and Young Adults with Autism: Third Generation Review.

This systematic review describes a set of practices that have evidence of positive effects with autistic children and youth. This is the third iteration of a review of the intervention literature (Odom et al. in J Autism Dev Disorders 40(4):425-436, 2010a; Prevent School Fail 54(4):275-282, 2010b; Wong et al. in https://autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/sites/autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu/files/imce/documents/2014-EBP-Report.pdf ; J Autism Dev Disorders 45(7):1951-1966, 2015), extending coverage to articles published between 1990 and 2017. A search initially yielded 31,779 articles, and the subsequent screening and evaluation process found 567 studies to include. Combined with the previous review, 972 articles were synthesized, from which the authors found 28 focused intervention practices that met the criteria for evidence-based practice (EBP). Former EBPs were recategorized and some manualized interventions were distinguished as meeting EBP criteria. The authors discuss implications for current practices and future research.

Growth in narrative retelling and inference abilities and relations with reading comprehension in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

Background and aims: Extant research indicates that children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without an intellectual disability (ID) often experience difficulty comprehending written texts that is unexpected in comparison with their cognitive abilities. This study investigated the development of two key skills, narrative and inference abilities, that support higher level text comprehension and their relation to lexical-semantic knowledge, ASD symptomatology, and age. Three questions were addressed: 1.) What was the nature of narrative and inference skill development over time? 2.) What was the relation between narrative or inference development and lexical-semantic knowledge, ASD symptomatology, and age? 3.) Did initial narrative and inferencing skills, and the development of these skills, predict reading comprehension outcomes? Methods: Data from 81 children and adolescents with ASD without ID (FIQ ≥ 75) between the ages of 8-16-years-old at timepoint 1 were collected at 15-month intervals across three timepoints. ASD symptomatology was assessed with the ADOS-2. Standardized narrative retelling, inference, reading comprehension, lexical-semantic knowledge and cognitive assessments were administered. Latent growth curve models were conducted to examine narrative and inference skill development, and conditional growth models were fit to examine the relation between growth trajectories and covariates (lexical-semantic knowledge, ASD symptomatology, age) as well as with the reading comprehension distal outcome. Results: Narrative retelling skills followed a linear trajectory of growth and were a relative strength in this sample, while inference skills were well below average and declined over time relative to age-normed standard scores. Lexical-semantic knowledge explained significant heterogeneity in initial narrative and inference skills, whereas ASD symptomatology was only related to initial narrative retelling abilities and age was only related to initial inference abilities. Timepoint 3 reading comprehension skill (in the below average range) was significantly explained by initial narrative retelling and inference abilities. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that narrative retelling and inference skills are important for successful reading comprehension for individuals with ASD without ID and that lexical-semantic knowledge underpins these skills. Furthermore, the observation that ASD symptom severity was associated with narrative retelling skills is consistent with the hypothesis that problems in narrative reading skills are associated with the autism phenotype. Finally, inference skill was a particular challenge for individuals in this sample, although age was positively associated with better performance on the assessment.Implications: These findings suggest that narrative and inference skills, in addition to lexical-semantic knowledge, are important to target beginning in elementary grades to improve reading comprehension outcomes for children and adolescents with ASD without ID.

Longitudinal stability of reading profiles in individuals with higher functioning autism.

The reading difficulties of individuals with autism spectrum disorders have been established in the literature, with particular attention drawn toward reading comprehension difficulties. Recent papers have highlighted the heterogeneous nature of reading abilities in this population by utilizing statistical methods that allow for investigations of unique reading profiles. This article extends this literature by investigating reading profiles longitudinally, to investigate the stability of reader profiles across time. Latent profile and transition analyses were conducted to establish categorically distinct reading profiles at two time points, 30 months apart. This study also examined whether age and autism symptom severity were related to the profiles at each time point. Finally, transitions between profiles at each time point were identified. Age did not predict profile membership, but there were significant differences in symptom severity that were largely stable over time. Results indicate that heterogeneous reading profiles exist within the autism population, ranging from average reading ability to severe difficulties across different reading subskills. The data from this study demonstrate that reading profiles of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders shift when examined across time.

Early reading skill profiles in typically developing and at-risk first grade readers to inform targeted early reading instruction.

This study identified distinct, homogeneous latent profiles of at-risk (n = 141) and not at-risk (n = 149) first grade readers. Separate latent profile analyses were conducted with each subgroup using measures of phonological awareness, decoding, linguistic comprehension, and oral reading fluency. This study also examined which measures best differentiated the latent profiles. Finally, we examined differences on two measures of reading comprehension as a function of profile membership. Results showed two latent profiles of at-risk students and three latent profiles of not at-risk students. Latent profiles were generally rank ordered with regard to achievement across measures. However, the higher performing at-risk profile and the lowest performing not at-risk profile were nearly identical across measures. Phonological awareness and decoding measures were best at differentiating latent profiles, but linguistic comprehension was also important for the lowest performing students. Oral reading fluency was limited to distinguishing the highest achieving students from the other profiles, and did not perform well with the lower achieving profiles. Most of the pairwise comparisons of reading comprehension scores were consistent across measures, but the nearly identical profiles showed a significant difference on only one reading comprehension measure. Implications for identifying at-risk first grade readers and designing targeted early reading interventions for at-risk students are discussed.

Comparing growth in linguistic comprehension and reading comprehension in school-aged children with autism versus typically developing children.

Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle with reading comprehension. Linguistic comprehension is an important predictor of reading comprehension, especially as children progress through elementary school and later grades. Yet, there is a dearth of research examining longitudinal relations between linguistic comprehensions in school-age children with ASD compared to typically-developing peers (TD). This study compared the developmental trajectories of linguistic and reading comprehension in samples of children with ASD and age-matched TD peers. Both groups were administered measures of linguistic and reading comprehension multiple times over a 30-month period. Latent growth curve modeling demonstrated children with ASD performed at significantly lower levels on both measures at the first timepoint and these deficits persisted across time. Children with ASD exhibited growth in both skills comparable to their TD peers, but this was not sufficient to enable them to eventually achieve at a level similar to the TD group. Due to the wide age range of the sample, age was controlled and displayed significant effects. Findings suggest linguistic comprehension skills are related to reading comprehension in children with ASD, similar to TD peers. Further, intervention in linguistic comprehension skills for children with ASD should begin early and there may be a finite window in which these skills are malleable, in terms of improving reading comprehension skills. Autism Res 2018, 11: 624-635. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: There is relatively little research concerning reading comprehension development in children with ASD and how they compare to TD peers. This study found children with ASD began at lower achievement levels of linguistic comprehension and reading comprehension than TD peers, but the skills developed at a similar rate. Intervening early and raising initial levels of linguistic and reading comprehension may enable children with ASD to perform similarly to TD peers over time.

The Scope and Nature of Reading Comprehension Impairments in School-Aged Children with Higher-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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.

A Comprehensive Examination of Reading Heterogeneity in Students with High Functioning Autism: Distinct Reading Profiles and Their Relation to Autism Symptom Severity.

The goal of this study was to identify unique profiles of readers in a sample of 8-16 year olds with higher functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) and examine the profiles in relation to ASD symptom severity. Eighty-one students were assessed utilizing a comprehensive reading battery that included basic word reading, language, and comprehension. Using Latent Profile Analysis, four empirically distinct profiles of readers emerged. Next, using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (Lord et al., Autism diagnostic observation schedule, 2nd edn, Western Psychological Services, Torrance, CA, 2012), analyses were conducted to determine if significant differences existed between profiles as a result of ASD symptomatology. Findings demonstrate the heterogeneous nature of reading profiles in students with HFASD and significant differences between the reading profiles and ASD symptom severity.