Caregivers and Their Children with Autism Reading Together

Background:

Experts have stressed the importance of including language and early literacy instruction as part of early intervention programming for children who are at-risk for reading difficulties but our understanding of literacy skill development for children with autism remains under-addressed in research and practice. Shared book reading interventions are well-studied approaches for bringing about change in language and early literacy with the additional benefit of being highly valued by both caregivers and early childhood professionals. To maximize the potential for shared reading, there is a critical need for research to be conducted in homes of children with autism to identify factors that can promote or inhibit shared reading experiences.

Objectives:

• To examine the extent to which children with autism actively participate in shared reading activities with their caregivers.
• Discuss challenges around participant recruitment and launching a program of research as a recently transplanted early career scholar.

Methods:

We used a quasi-experimental group design to study shared reading interactions of caregivers reading to their typically developing children (N=20) and caregivers reading to their children with autism (N=18). Caregivers read a total of nine books to their preschool-age child: preferred books selected by the child and/or caregiver from their personal library; unfamiliar fictional books; and unfamiliar non-fictional books. All reading sessions were videotaped to allow research assistants to code videos for the quality of joint engagement during book readings. Children’s levels of engagement during book reading sessions were measured using continuous time sampling. Definitions of engagement have been adapted specifically for book reading from previous work on joint attention (Adamson, Bakeman, & Deckner, 2004; Wong & Kasari, 2012).

Results:

Our preliminary analyses reveal that children with autism spent more time unengaged (9.5%) in reading compared to typically developing children (3.4%). In addition children with autism demonstrated more frequent behaviors that disrupted reading sessions (3.3%) compared to their typical peers (1.7%). Typically developing children spent the majority of book reading in a passive engagement state (63.4%; e.g., listening to the caregiver read) followed by joint engagement (29.8%; e.g., making comments, responding to questions). Children with autism spent less time passively engaged (47.7%) and more time jointly engaged (38.1%) compared to typically developing children. Analyses of factors that may influence child engagement, specifically book type (familiar, non-fiction; fiction) and quality of parent book reading, are forthcoming.

Conclusions:

Shared book reading requires that children are able to sustain social interaction around a particular book, which can be challenging for many children with ASD due to difficulties with social communication and joint attention. These preliminary findings suggest that engagement in shared reading is both qualitatively and quantitatively different for children with autism compared to typically developing children. Additional analyses are forthcoming that will allow us to identify malleable factors that can promote or inhibit shared reading experiences, which may serve as targets for future intervention.