article review 6

From word reading to multisentence comprehension:

Improvements in brain activity in children with autism after reading intervention

The Simple View of Reading model posits two primary precursors necessary to develop reading comprehension: decoding and listening comprehension skills. In children

with ASD, research shows that comprehension is significantly lower than would be expected given verbal and decoding skills. This is further supported by neuroimaging evidence of

ASD participants showing increased reliance on brain regions involved in visuospatial processing, including the ventral temporal cortex, to interpret language. Currently, little is known about whether interventions aimed at improving reading comprehension in other reading disorders can be applied to children with ASD. The research is novel in that it utilized an intervention that targets visual processing, a relatively intact skill in ASD individuals, to improve their reading comprehension. The study assessed three tasks of increasing complexity before and after the reading intervention training program, the visualizing and verbalizing for language comprehension and thinking, in order to break down the core areas of neural change specific to each task.The results revealed distinct recruitment of different brain regions based on both task complexity and participation in the reading intervention.