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EMERGENT LITERACY IN ASD 1 The emergent literacy skills of preschool children with autism spectrum disorder
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Westerveld, Marleen F. Trembath, David T. |
| Copyright Year | 2017 |
| Abstract | A high percentage of school-age students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reading comprehension difficulties leading to academic disadvantage. These difficulties may be related to differences in children’s emergent literacy development in the preschool years. In this study, we examined the relationship between emergent literacy skills, broader cognitive and language ability, autism severity, and home literacy environment factors in 57 preschoolers with ASD. The children showed strengths in code-related emergent literacy skills such as alphabet knowledge, but significant difficulties with meaning-related emergent literacy skills. There was a significant relationship between meaning-related skills, autism severity, general oral language skills, and nonverbal cognition. Identification of these meaning-related precursors will guide the targets for early intervention to help ensure reading success for students with ASD. EMERGENT LITERACY IN ASD 4 In recent years, there has been an increase in attention to the academic achievements of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Keen, Webster, & Ridley, 2015; Wong et al., 2015), due in part to increasing numbers of children diagnosed with ASD in schools. Recent prevalence data suggest ASD affects approximately one in 68 children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). In Australia, the most recent census data indicate that ASD affects approximately 1 in 200 school-age children (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014), of whom 95% experience challenges in education due primarily to social, communication, and learning difficulties. That said, academic achievement of students with ASD varies widely and, although cognitive abilities are one influence, discrepancies between cognitive and academic achievement are also observed (Estes, Rivera, Bryan, Cali, & Dawson, 2011). One critical area of academic achievement is learning to read. Although there is evidence from several studies that school-age children with ASD may perform poorly on tasks measuring reading comprehension (Brown, Oram-Cardy, & Johnson, 2013; Henderson, Clarke, & Snowling, 2014; Jones et al., 2009; Ricketts, 2011), very few studies have investigated how young children with ASD develop their reading foundation skills prior to school-entry (Westerveld, Trembath, Shellshear, & Paynter, 2016). Investigating the early developmental pathways to reading competency, referred to as emergent literacy development, in preschool children with ASD will help clarify whether the reasons for reading failure are autism specific or related to these children’s often comorbid cognitive and/or oral language difficulties. The Simple View of Reading According to the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), reading comprehension is the product of two components: word recognition and oral language comprehension. During the early stages of reading development, the emphasis is on learning EMERGENT LITERACY IN ASD 5 to recognize or decode the written words on a page and much of the variance in reading comprehension is explained by children’s word recognition ability. As children progress to years three or four of schooling and improve in their ability to accurately and efficiently recognize words, oral language comprehension becomes the main contributor to reading comprehension (Catts, Hogan, & Adlof, 2005). Using this Simple View of Reading as a framework, children with reading comprehension difficulties can be classified as a) those who show weaknesses in word recognition, but have adequate oral language comprehension skills; b) those who show adequate word recognition, but struggle with oral language comprehension; and c) those who show weaknesses in both word recognition and oral language comprehension (Catts, Hogan, & Fey, 2003). As noted above, research into the reading abilities of individuals with ASD has revealed particular difficulties with reading comprehension but also relative strengths in word recognition or decoding (Henderson et al., 2014; Huemer & Mann, 2010; Nation, Clarke, Wright, & Williams, 2006; Ricketts, Jones, Happé, & Charman, 2013). However, the results of these studies reveal substantial variability in performance for individual participants, both in word recognition and reading comprehension, ranging from severely impaired (more than two standard deviations below the mean) to within normal limits. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that word recognition ability in individuals with ASD explains more of the variance in reading comprehension than would be expected based on typically developing readers (Henderson et al., 2014). When investigating emergent literacy development in children with ASD, we thus need to consider the developmental precursors to both word recognition (i.e., code-related skills) and oral language comprehension (i.e., meaning-related skills). Moreover, considering the heterogeneity of the disorder, several researchers have stressed the importance of investigating behaviors within groups of children with ASD, rather than comparing these children to typically developing peers (Ricketts et al., 2013; TagerEMERGENT LITERACY IN ASD 6 Flusberg, 2004). An improved understanding of the variation in emergent literacy skills in preschool aged children with ASD may help guide the development and implementation of targeted early intervention practices. Emergent Literacy Development and Assessment Using the Simple View of Reading as a framework, emergent literacy may be conceptualized as comprising code-related skills (i.e., letter name and sound knowledge, print concepts, early name writing, and early developing phonological awareness) that are needed for successful word recognition, and meaning-related emergent literacy skills comprising vocabulary, grammatical ability, and narrative retelling and comprehension (NICHD, 2005). Typically developing children who enter school with better developed emergent literacy skills are more likely to become successful readers (Catts, Herrera, Nielsen, & Bridges, 2015; Tunmer, Chapman, & Prochnow, 2006). In fact, Tunmer and colleagues (2006) found that school-entry emergent literacy ability accounted for almost 70% of the variance in reading achievement seven years later. Emergent literacy learning is generally fostered in the home or preschool environment through interactions with parents, caregivers, and early childhood professionals (e.g., Li & Fleer, 2015; Pentimonti et al., 2012; Sénéchal, Pagan, Lever, & Ouellette, 2008). By engaging in literacy-rich activities such as shared book reading and participating in sound games, many emergent literacy milestones, such as the development of print concepts of how to hold books, to read from left to right, and to recognize that letters and words hold meaning, may be achieved before children start school (Justice, 2006). When evaluating children’s emergent literacy performance it is therefore important to assess these children prior to school-entry and to consider how the development of these skills may have been nurtured in the home environment. Assessment of code-related emergent literacy skills is relatively straightforward and generally includes evaluation of the following predictors of future reading development: EMERGENT LITERACY IN ASD 7 alphabet knowledge, print-concept knowledge, and phonological awareness (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Although a range of tasks (both formal and informal) have been published to assess emergent literacy skills in preschool-age children (e.g., Clay, 2000; Dickinson & Chaney, 1997; Dodd, Crosbie, Mcintosh, Teitzel, & Ozanne, 2000; Invernizzi, Sullivan, & Meier, 2001), these assessments do not always include oral language or the meaning-related skills that are needed for adequate reading comprehension (Catts et al., 2015). Based on their recent investigation into predictors of reading comprehension, Catts et al. emphasized the importance of early assessment of oral language skills to identify children who are at risk for later reading comprehension difficulties (see also, Foorman, Herrera, Petscher, Mitchell, & Truckenmiller, 2015). These researchers found that kindergarten oral language and code-related skills were directly associated with reading comprehension three years later. Researchers also suggest that assessment of preschool oral language skills should go beyond measuring vocabulary to also evaluate children’s comprehension at both the sentenceand discourseor text-level (Catts et al., 2015; Foorman et al., 2015; Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2002). Although the significant impact of vocabulary knowledge on reading development has been well established (Lucas & Norbury, 2015; Tunmer & Chapman, 2012), the importance of oral narrative comprehension and production should not be underestimated, as preschool oral narrative comprehension has been found to be predictive of future reading comprehension ability (Bishop & Adams, 1990; Lynch et al., 2008). Moreover, children with reading difficulties (but who are otherwise typically developing) often demonstrate significant weaknesses in their ability to comprehend or produce oral narratives, when compared to their peers with typical reading development (Cain, 2003; Westerveld, Gillon, & Moran, 2008). Children with ASD are known to struggle with oral narrative tasks (e.g., Diehl, Bennetto, & Young, 2006; Losh & Capps, 2003; Nuske & Bavin, 2011). Consistent with the EMERGENT LITERACY IN ASD 8 central coherence theory (see Happé & Frith, 2006), children with ASD show weaknesses with processing information at a global (or macrostructure) level (e.g., higher-level organization/integration of semantic information), and as a result, their oral narratives may be poorly organized and show limited evidence of causal language (Diehl et al., 2006; Losh & Capps, 2003). Therefore, assessment of meaning-related emergent literacy skills should include an oral narrative task, which will yield important inform |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.marleenwesterveld.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Emergent-Literacy-MS-JADD-R2-post-print-Copy.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
