An exploratory study on the effects of anaphoric cuing on Chinese reading comprehension of students with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of anaphoric cuing on the reading comprehension of 17 adolescent students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 19 typically developing (TD) students matched on age, intellectual ability and word decoding ability. In a within-subject design, participants read four Chinese passages of two types (narrative fictional vs. narrative nonfictional) under two conditions (control [reading only] vs. anaphoric cuing). The ASD group showed significantly poorer reading comprehension than the TD group in the control condition. Contrary to prediction, anaphoric cuing produced a hindrance effect rather than facilitation effect on the reading comprehension performance of both groups. Correlation analysis showed different patterns between ASD and TD groups in the relationship between the ability to resolve anaphora and comprehension of the two types of passages.