Improving Comprehension of Narrative Using Character Event Maps for High School Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Few studies examine specific interventions for increasing narrative text comprehension for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, both the cognitive reading profiles common in ASD and the focus on access to complex text for all learners suggest the need for interventions to support narrative text comprehension. Using a multiple baseline design, the current study examined the effectiveness of an intervention package that included scaffolded completion of a character event map paired with a review of the previous session’s map to make a prediction about the coming chapter on the narrative text comprehension of three male adolescents with ASD. There was an immediate change in comprehension scores for all three participants during intervention. Comprehension for all participants remained high through intervention and follow-up. Implications for research and practice are addressed.

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder narrative texts comprehension

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the fastest growing developmental disability, with current estimates suggesting 1 out of 88 individuals have the disorder (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2012). For many individuals with higher functioning ASD, academic achievement predicted by intellectual level is not met (Estes, Rivera, Bryan, Cali, & Dawson, 2011). This may be related to well-documented problems with reading comprehension throughout students’ academic careers. Although wide patterns of strengths and weaknesses in all components of reading are noted (cf. Nation & Norbury, 2005), for adolescents with higher functioning ASD, difficulties with reading comprehension appear to be the area of the greatest challenge (Jones et al., 2009). Furthermore, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) adopted by 45 states require that students engage in reading more complex texts across their academic careers (National Governors Association Center for Best Practice, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). Thus, additional research is needed to support comprehension of narrative texts.

Comprehension

Language and literacy acquisition mutually reinforce each other, as “comprehension refers to the listener or reader’s understand of the message expressed by the speaker or writer” (Duke & Carlisle, 2011, p. 312). Development of listening and reading comprehension are intertwined. For an individual to read a word with meaning, the word must first be available in listening vocabulary. Task demands are different, as listening comprehension requires language processing, and reading comprehension requires decoding of texts. Listening comprehension exceeds reading comprehension for early readers, whereas reading comprehension exceeds listening comprehension for skilled readers (Duke & Carlisle, 2011).

In both listening and silent reading, text and reader factors influence comprehension. For deep comprehension to occur, readers must construct accurate text bases (i.e., mental models of information contained explicitly in the text), as well as develop situation models that closely integrate the text base with the individual’s related prior knowledge (Kintsch, 1998, 2004).

Comprehending Narratives

As narrative texts increase in complexity, language and knowledge demands grow in sophistication. For example, figurative or ironic language replaces literal language found in texts with lower readability levels. Similarly, knowledge demands related to comprehension of more complex texts shift from knowledge of everyday experiences toward comprehending experiences through reading that are different from one’s own (National Governors Association Center for Best Practice, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010).

Narratives share a relatively stable story grammar (Reutzel, 1984). Typical story grammars include a problem, solutions, and resolution (Dimino, Taylor, & Gersten, 1995). Another important aspect of story grammar is “how characters react to the events in a story” (p. 54). Because the plot line is linked to what happens to characters, especially protagonists, evidence suggests deeper understandings of character may facilitate overall reading comprehension of narrative texts (Lukens, 1999; Norton, Norton, & McClure, 2003; Roser, Martinez, Fuhrken, & McDonnold, 2007).

Attention to character seems to evolve developmentally (Martinez, Keehn, Roser, Harmon, & O’Neal, 2002). Younger readers appear less likely to consider the mental states of characters, compared with older readers (Sipe, 2000; Wollman-Bonilla & Werchadlo, 1995). For example, in a study of the retellings of younger students, characters’ actions rather than thoughts, ideas, and feelings, were the focus of retellings (McConaughy, Fitzhenry-Coor, & Howell, 1983). In another study, the same short story was read to 300 typically developing students, aged 6 to 14 (Martinez et al., 2002). Younger readers discussed external factors about characters far more frequently than internal character traits, whereas older students did the opposite. Researchers concluded the trajectory of students’ understanding about characters changed with age from a focus on external attributes (e.g., appearance, behavior) to internal attributes (e.g., feelings, motives).

Comprehension in ASD

Research into the Theory of Mind (ToM), or the ability to make inferences in social situations (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), suggests individuals with ASD have difficulty understanding mental states of others (e.g., intention, desires, beliefs). This difficulty in social situations may compromise reading comprehension when similar kinds of inferences (e.g., character motive) must be made (Baron-Cohen, 2000). Thus, cognitive processing differences are highly relevant to narrative reading comprehension (Carnahan & Williamson, 2010; Carnahan, Williamson, & Christman, 2011; Williamson, Carnahan, & Jacobs, 2012). For example, White, Hill, Happe, and Frith (2009) found that although individuals with ASD were able to make inferences about natural events, they experienced difficulties making inferences about human and animal actions.

Narrative Comprehension Among Individuals With ASD

Students with ASD have well-documented difficulties with social interactions, including challenges with pragmatic language. These differences in social and communication may constrain their ability to develop necessary mental models to facilitate narrative comprehension (Ricketts, Jones, Happe, & Charman, 2013). Garcia-Perez, Hobson, and Lee (2008) found that individuals with ASD had difficulties retelling stories from the perspective of different characters. Dodd, Ocampo, and Kennedy (2011) compared the performance of 18 students with ASD who ranged in age from 9 years, 7 months to 12 years, 2 months in two language programs. The first program emphasized traditional story elements and semantics, whereas the second program emphasized character perspective taking. The researchers found that the perspective-taking group was better able to understand the emotional states of characters as well as the underlying causes or factors that influence emotional states.

In addition, documented difficulties with figurative language include problems with comprehension of metaphors, idioms, and irony in oral language (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Dennis, Lazenby, & Lockyer, 2001; Dodd et al., 2011; Mackay & Shaw, 2004; Norbury, 2005; Rundblad & Annaz, 2010), which likely influence reading comprehension of narratives, particularly as narrative texts increase in complexity.

Interventions to Support Text Comprehension

Multiple literature reviews have documented the effectiveness of reading comprehension instruction among students with learning disabilities (LD), including interventions for narrative text comprehension. Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, and Baker (2001) found that explicit instruction related to text structure (i.e., story grammar) enabled students with LD to focus on what was important, which improved reading comprehension. Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, and Wei (2004) explored the effects of graphic organizers on reading outcomes for students with LD and found improved reading comprehension outcomes. In addition, Berkeley, Scruggs, and Mastropieri (2010) conducted a meta-analysis of reading comprehension interventions for students with LD. They concluded that yet another decade of research demonstrated the “effectiveness of a wide variety of reading comprehension interventions” (p. 433), including cognitive strategy instruction and text enhancements (e.g., graphic organizers for narratives).

Reading Comprehension Interventions for Individuals With ASD

Although evidence-based practices for improving reading comprehension among individuals with ASD are few (cf. Chiang & Lin, 2007; Whalon, Al Otaiba, & Delano, 2009), efficacious research-based reading comprehension interventions for individuals with ASD are beginning to emerge. Whalon and Hanline (2008) demonstrated that reciprocal questioning, a peer support strategy, had positive effects on the reading comprehension of elementary students with ASD. Stringfield, Luscre, and Gast (2011) taught three elementary-aged boys how to complete a story map after reading. Positive effects on reading comprehension occurred quickly and were maintained throughout the intervention.

A handful of studies investigated reading comprehension interventions for adolescent students with high-functioning ASD. Carnahan, Williamson, Swoboda, Birri, and Synder (2013) conducted two studies that demonstrated improvements in the reading comprehension of science text through explicit teaching of text patterns. In the first study, three adolescent boys with ASD who comprehended at a first-grade level were taught to use a compare–contrast text structure strategy to comprehend model science passages. In a follow up study, three high school students whose comprehension ranged from fifth grade to upper middle were taught to recognize multiple text patterns (i.e., description, compare–contrast, cause–effect) in authentic science texts.

Two studies investigated improving the comprehension narrative texts among adolescent students with ASD (i.e., Asberg & Sandberg, 2010; O’Connor & Klein, 2004). Asberg and Sandberg (2010) taught 12 high-functioning students with autism, ages 10 to 15, to use a questioning strategy that included identifying the question type to facilitate question answering. The intervention included professional development for teachers around the cognitive and linguistic challenges faced by students with autism, as well as training on how to use the intervention materials. Intervention materials included a series of short passages and questions that increased in length throughout the intervention. Passages were designed to provide a gradual release of the strategy from the teacher to the students. Depending on reading levels, students either read the passages or teachers read the passages to students. The intervention resulted in significant improvements in discourse comprehension from pre- to post-assessments after 4 weeks of intervention. O’Connor and Klein (2004) found that helping 20 adolescents with ASD identify relevant antecedents to resolve anaphora during the reading of narrative passages facilitated reading comprehension. Although both of these studies suggest ways to improve comprehension of narrative text, both involve the use of short passages over relatively short durations of time.

Given the well-documented challenges with reading comprehension, coupled with the call in the CCSS for students to read complex, narrative texts to analyze how complex characters “develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practice, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), there is a pressing need to identify instructional strategies to improve narrative comprehension among individuals with ASD. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention package that included scaffolded completion of a character event map paired with review of the previous session’s map to make a prediction about the coming chapter. Specifically, this study sought to answer the following research questions:

Research Question 1: Does an intervention package designed to teach high school students with ASD to understand characters through events and literary terms increase their listening comprehension of a novel?

Research Question 2: To what extent is this intervention implemented with fidelity by a classroom teacher and considered to be socially valid by the teacher and students?

Method

Participants and Setting

This study took place during the language arts block in an urban fringe high school resource room in the Midwest. Student participants in this study included three teenage males with autism. All three students had medical diagnosis of ASD, demonstrated listening and reading comprehension levels of at least the fifth grade, and were able to communicate using verbal and written forms. Record reviews, the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–4 (CELF-4; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2003), and Qualitative Reading Inventory–5 (QRI-4; Leslie & Caldwell, 2010) were conducted prior to the beginning of the intervention.

Simon was 17 years old. He scored in the 5th percentile on the Core Language measure and in the 1st percentile on the Expressive Language measure of the CELF-4 (Semel et al., 2003). Simon decoded text at the fifth-grade level and comprehended text at the sixth-grade level; his listening comprehension level was at the upper middle school level. No recent IQ score was available. Simon received a variety of related services including speech, occupational therapy, and vocational supports. He was included in general education classrooms for science and social studies.

Wyatt was 16 years old. In 2009, he was given the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale–Fifth Edition. His full-scale IQ was 76. He decoded text at the third-grade level and comprehended at the fifth-grade level. His listening comprehension level was upper middle. According to the CELF-4 (Semel et al., 2003), his standard score was in the 27th percentile on the Core Language measure and 9th percentile on the Expressive Language measure. He received his academic instruction in a resource room setting. He received related services including speech, occupational therapy, and physical therapy.

York was 16 years old at the time of the study. No recent IQ measures were available. He decoded text at the sixth-grade level, comprehended text at the third-grade level, and demonstrated his listening comprehension at third-grade level. Based on the CELF-4 (Semel et al., 2003), York’s Core Language and Expressive Language scores were both in the 1st percentile. York received academic instruction in science and math in inclusive settings, and participated in other academic instruction in the resource room. He also received a variety of related service supports including speech, occupational therapy, and physical therapy services.

The teacher was in her second year working as a special educator for students with autism and other similar learning needs. She held a bachelor’s degree in special education and two special education licenses (i.e., mild-to-moderate and moderate-to-severe) to serve K–12 students. She had little experience or professional development in the way of building narrative text comprehension for students with autism.

Materials

Hunger Games (Collins, 2010) was the text used in this study. The teacher selected the text, as she believed that reading this book was important to her students’ social interactions. The teacher purchased an unabridged audio CD (Collins, 2008) and a hardcopy of the text for each student. Students listened to the book on CD, as they followed along in their own copies of the book (Roser et al., 2007). With one exception, one chapter of the text was used for each session of the study (i.e., Chapters 14 and 15 were combined, as 14 was only 15 min long). None of the participants had previously read the book, and only one student (Simon) reported having seen the movie version of the book. A series of 10 comprehension questions was used to assess student comprehension for each chapter in all sessions of the study. Two specific strategies developed by the first author who has expertise in reading were used to ensure question complexity was consistent across chapter questions. First, the number of explicit and implicit questions remained the same across chapters. Second, the general content of the questions remained the same. For example, each set contained 2 questions about the central character’s feelings and motives, and 2 questions about the author’s use of literary terms. Sample questions are provided in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Sample question types and questions from Chapter 12.

During intervention and maintenance, other materials included a chapter specific character event map, key literary terms with definitions, and a list of literary terms. Figure 2 contains an excerpt from a character event map used during intervention. The character event map was a three-column table describing “who is involved,” “what happened,” and “what it means.” Critical story events and details were listed under each heading including the characters (i.e., who is involved), event description (i.e., what happened), and interpretation (i.e., what it means). Each character event map contained five to seven events, depending on chapter length.

Figure 2.

Character event map excerpt.

The literary terms were embedded in a second table using headings, “term,” “definition,” and “example.” The table included the terms idiom, metaphor, foreshadowing, and irony. The center column contained the definition, and the right column included a text example. Finally, a table with headings, “what’s the term,” “who/what it’s about,” and “what it means” was used to apply the literary terms to each chapter.

Dependent Variable

Students’ comprehension of narrative text was the dependent variable in this study. Comprehension was measured using student responses to chapter questions. Similar to previous studies addressing comprehension for students with autism (Carnahan & Williamson, 2013; Williamson et al., 2012) and procedures outlined in the QRI-5 (Leslie & Caldwell, 2010), students were given the opportunity to look back in the text to respond to any questions answered incorrectly.

Independent Variable

The independent variable in this study was an intervention package designed to support comprehension of narrative text. The package included a review of the prior session’s chapter content, a prediction based on the review, and scaffolding student completion of the character event map and literary terms for each chapter. Before listening and following along with the book, the teacher worked with students to review the previous session’s character event map, literary terms, and their meanings in the chapter context. Using reviewed information, students made predictions for the coming chapter. After listening to the new chapter, the teacher scaffolded completion of the character event map and literary terms for the new chapter. During modeling, the teacher modeled how to think through completing the map using think alouds.

Design

A multiple baseline design was used to assess the effectiveness of the intervention on comprehension of narrative text for three high-functioning students with ASD. During baseline, data were not collected for Chapter 4 due to an implementation error (i.e., the teacher printed the incorrect quiz questions). Phase changes occurred after three to five data points of improvement in treatment and no upward trend in treatment for the remaining participants. Intervention ended for all participants at Chapter 19. Due to school holidays, follow up data were collected approximately 3 weeks after intervention for Chapters 25 to 27.

Procedures

Baseline

Baseline followed typical procedures used by the teacher during reading instruction. Each lesson began with a written visual schedule across all phases of the study. Students then read the title of the book or section and made a prediction. Next, students followed along in a printed version of the text as the text was read aloud on audio CD. After reading, the teacher led a class discussion to help students verbally summarize the content. Discussion included probes, such as “what did we learn in the chapter” and “what else did we learn?” When students offered incomplete ideas, the teacher encouraged students to elaborate. If students provided inaccurate information, the teacher provided correct information. At the end of each session, students answered 10 comprehension questions. Students received a written copy of the questions and followed along as the teacher or a paraeducator read each question aloud. Students were given the option of responding in writing or verbally. Students were given the opportunity to look back in the text to correct any unanswered or incorrect responses.

Intervention

During the intervention, the teacher ran two groups—an intervention group and a baseline group—until all students were in intervention. Similar to baseline, the teacher started each session by reviewing the visual schedule. Students took turns orally reviewing the events and figurative language from the previous chapter. Using the character event map, students made a prediction about the coming chapter. Next, students followed along in the text while listening to the read aloud.

Following the reading of the text, the teacher and student(s) discussed the purpose of completing the character event map and literary terms (e.g., It helps us comprehend the story better). The teacher reminded students that an event was something that “happened in the story that was important to the characters.” The teacher also noted “events have three parts, what happened—the event. Who was involved—the characters. And, what it means, or the importance of the event to the story”. Next, the teacher modeled completing the first row of the character event map using think alouds that showed students how she figured out which character or characters were involved in the event (e.g., looking back to the beginning of the event in the book) and the meaning of the event to the story (e.g., making connections across events) as she completed each column. Thereafter, the teacher identified each event and the students verbally responded to the column headings to develop a shared understanding. On completing the three columns for each event, the teacher asked one student to summarize the event by putting the event in his or her own words. She then asked another student to summarize why the event was important. For example, she asked, “tell us why this is important,” or “why do you think that is important to the book.” Students took turns verbally reviewing the literary terms and chapter examples. Similar to baseline, each student then answered a series of 10 questions.

Measures

Comprehension measures

At the end of all sessions, each student answered a series of 10 comprehension questions. The teacher recorded the number of questions correct after look-backs on each paper. A researcher also scored each set of questions. Although the vast majority of the time the teacher and the researcher agreed about whether questions were answered correctly, disputed items (i.e., 5 out of 240 questions) were discussed until a consensus was reached, resulting in 100% agreement.

Intervention fidelity

The team collected intervention fidelity data on 100% of all sessions using a checklist. The checklist detailed each step in the intervention and closely followed the visual schedule the teacher used. The teacher implemented the intervention with 100% fidelity.

Social validity

The students and teacher completed a social validity questionnaire about the text structure intervention adapted from Lane and Beebe-Frankenberger (2004). The teacher questionnaire contained six Likert-type scale questions and two open-ended questions. The student questionnaire contained four questions with a Likert-type scale and two open-ended questions.

Data Analysis

The effectiveness of the intervention package on increasing comprehension of narrative text was evaluated using visual analysis attending to trend, level, stability, and immediacy of effect (Gast & Spriggs, 2010; Horner et al., 2005). To supplement the visual analysis, the percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) was calculated (Scruggs, Mastropieri, & Casto, 1987) and the Conservative Dual Criterion (CDC) method was used (Fisher, Kelley, & Lomas, 2003; Swoboda, Kratochwill, & Levin, 2010).

Results

Comprehension Questions

When students answer less than 70% of all comprehension questions accurately, the text is considered to be at the frustration level (Leslie & Caldwell, 2010). At the start of the study, all three students scored in the frustration level on average with Simon answering 60%, Wyatt 58%, and York only 35% correct. However, all three students abruptly moved to the instructional or independent level on entering intervention. Across intervention and follow up, on average Simon answered 97% and Wyatt 95% correct (i.e., at the independent level). York answered 79% correctly, placing the text at the instructional level for him.

Figure 3 contains the multiple baseline graph with intervention phase visual aides added using the CDC method (Fisher et al., 2003; Swoboda et al., 2010). To demonstrate a significant intervention effect on the narrative text comprehension question outcome, the majority of the intervention data points should exceed both conservatively adjusted level and trend lines placed on the graph. For Simon, Wyatt, and York, the criteria were nine, eight, and four intervention data points exceeding both level and trend lines, respectively. This was met in all three cases, demonstrating evidence of a significant intervention effect. Finally, the PND was used to further validate results. For all students, PND was 100%, providing further evidence of a significant intervention effect.

Figure 3.

Mean comprehension question accuracy scores with conservative dual criterion method, including intervention phase visual aides.

Social Validity

The surveys suggest high social validity for the intervention. The teacher strongly agreed with all questions (i.e., taught important skills, was appropriate given students’ needs, was within teacher skill to implement, increased student comprehension, will use the intervention again, would recommend the intervention to others, what did you like about the intervention, what did you dislike about the intervention). She commented on the skills taught, but comments regarding student engagement and confidence were perhaps the most important. She said,

One of the things that made this study so successful was choosing a book that is of high interest. While reading, students were highly engaged, and at times would be disappointed when we would reach the end of the chapter and have to stop reading for the day. I also noticed that students were very eager to participate in the before reading and after reading activities when they were given the opportunity to discuss what they thought each character event and literary term meant. Throughout the intervention portion of the study I saw a significant increase in students’ confidence when discussing their interpretations, as well as their comprehension.

In addition to the teacher, the students provided information on their perception of the intervention (i.e., the strategy taught me important skills, the strategy helped me understand what I was reading, the strategy helped me talk about what I read, the strategy helped me answer the questions my teacher asked, what did you like about the strategy, what would you change about the strategy). All three students strongly agreed the intervention helped increase their comprehension of the book. Simon noted that it helped him “understand what the important events meant.” York concurred noting, “It helped me figure out what the story was about.”

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention package that included scaffolded completion of a character event map paired with a review of the previous session’s map to make a prediction about the coming chapter on increasing narrative text comprehension. The intervention was delivered by a second-year teacher with high fidelity (100%) and perceived to be socially valid by the teacher and students.

Two previous studies investigated facilitating narrative text comprehension of adolescents with ASD. The first study revealed a useful strategy, anaphoric cuing, to help students with ASD generate accurate text bases (O’Connor & Klein, 2004). The Asberg and Sandberg (2010) study suggested that with scaffolding, students with ASD could comprehend short texts at the discourse level. The current study, however, addressed how to sustain high levels of comprehension across a novel. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the baseline condition in this study was likely similar to reading instruction in many classrooms where students with ASD are served (Whalon & Hart, 2011); it did not support comprehension for these students. Perhaps, most importantly, this study suggests that with the support of this intervention, adolescents with higher functioning ASD can discuss interpretations of characters’ actions, motives, and feelings with confidence.

This study departs from studies of listening comprehension among typically developing students that suggest that as students grow older, listening comprehension increases the task difficulty due to the fact that rereading and other text monitoring techniques are not available (Duke & Carlisle, 2011). It appears that for students in this study, listening while reading along may have minimized the task difficulty of decoding text. In particular, only one student in this study had decoding skills at the instructional level of the text (i.e., York could decode sixth-grade level text). In addition, both Wyatt and Simon had higher listening comprehension than reading levels.

Finally, although reading comprehension profiles for individuals with ASD vary (cf. Brown, Oram-Cardy, & Johnson, 2013; Williamson et al., 2012), converging evidence suggests that narrative texts may be particularly challenging due to difficulties with social behaviors and social cognitive profiles among these individuals (Ricketts et al., 2013; White et al., 2009). Our findings suggest that explicit instruction that focuses students’ attention on characters’ experiences with events may be useful in mediating narrative comprehension challenges.

Limitations

Although this study provides support for an intervention package designed to support comprehension of narrative text among individuals with ASD, limitations exist. First, this study included only three students with ASD, who varied in language scores and reading levels. For this intervention package to be deemed an evidence-based practice, replication across more students and researchers is needed. Second, the teacher selected this book because she felt students would be highly motivated to read the story, given the book’s popularity with like-aged peers. The CCSS provide lists of narrative texts that may not be as motivating for students to read. Thus, it is unclear whether this intervention would function equally well in a less engaging text.

Implications for Practice and Research

There are two aspects of this intervention that seem particularly relevant to practice. First, prior to this intervention, business as usual was to use the title or section headings to help students develop predictions for the text. Observations revealed that predictions developed by students using this approach were only superficially related to what happened next in the story. However, predictions developed after reviewing the previous session’s character map were far more complex, and perhaps most important, accurately suggested what was going to happen next in the story. Another critical aspect related to implementation of the intervention was the depth of knowledge the teacher had about this novel. As with other studies (e.g., Carnahan & Williamson, 2013; Carnahan et al., 2013), an important aspect of this intervention was the teacher’s scaffolding of the character event map. She had read all of the books in the series prior to the beginning of the study and reread each chapter before teaching. During her second read of the material, she was able to focus on how to explain her thoughts about character events, which likely improved the quality of her think alouds. Only one study found carefully addressed this aspect of intervention (Asberg & Sandberg, 2010), which is very likely critical to effective implementation (see Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005, for an implementation review).

Although this study has important implications for facilitating comprehension of narrative texts among adolescents with high-functioning ASD, the need for additional studies is indicated. First, it would be important to determine whether the intervention would be efficacious if only reading or listening were used. In general education classrooms, frequently one or the other is offered to students. Thus, it would be important to look at each mode independently. As noted earlier, it would be important to assess the efficacy of this strategy with less motivating texts. Finally, future research should examine the implication of fading the teacher support of completing the character event map. In particular, research needs to examine ways to help students with higher functioning ASD to independently recognize salient character events. Given what is known about the cognitive characteristics of these individuals, perhaps the best source might be linguistic markers embedded in narrative texts. Unlike expository texts that have been well-researched in this area (e.g., markers that signal text structures, such as the link of because to cause–effect text structure), less is available in the general literature to begin with, presumably due to the idea that for typically developing individuals, narrative texts are easier to comprehend.

Conclusion

Recent research suggests both social behavior and social cognition contribute to the reading comprehension differences of individuals with ASD (Ricketts et al., 2013). Given that these are hallmarks of this disorder, and that many individuals with high-functioning ASD fail to reach their academic potential, continued development of efficacious interventions for narrative texts are needed. Thus far, a critical aspect of comprehension interventions for students with ASD, much as Berkeley et al. (2010) noted about students with LD, is to scaffold interventions while “teach(ing) students to attend more carefully or to think more systematically about text as it was being read” (p. 433). Conclusions drawn from the present study suggest that perhaps this same conclusion may be said about students with high-functioning ASD.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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