The Ability of High Function Individuals With Autism to Comprehend Written Discourse

Abstract

This study assessed whether high functioning readers with autism are capable of drawing on prior knowledge during reading. Readers with autism and matched normal readers read ambiguous texts that described well-known historical events. The presence of an informative or noninformative title and primer texts that explicitly described the referenced events were manipulated. Story recall was collected. The results indicated that readers with autism were able to take advantage of cues to background knowledge to activate and associate the referenced event at a general level, but were not able to use that knowledge to interpret and remember specific information. These results suggest that difficulties in discourse understanding that are experienced by high functioning individuals with autism may stem from a difficulty in making use of relevant background knowledge to interpret ambiguities in language.