Reading Ability and Executive Functioning of Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism

This dissertation, "Reading Ability and Executive Functioning of Adolescents With High-functioning Autism" by Ying, Galen, Liu, 劉穎, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Background: Regarding the research on individuals with autism, more focus was on the behavioral and social aspects, whereas relatively limited attention has received in the domain of learning of this population. As the development of assessments in assessing the needs of the population is getting more comprehensive and sophisticated in recent years, there is a trend of increase in the number of children being identified with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and were placed in general educational settings and engaged in mainstream academic curricula. 　　To survive in the mainstream education setting, proficiency in reading is essential. However, there are evidences suggested that people with ASD show difficulties in reading, especially in reading comprehension. Therefore, it would be valuable to investigate the potential factors that might hinder the reading performance of people with ASD and develops corresponding strategies to cater their needs. 　　In this paper, the role of executive functioning and metacognitive awareness towards reading performance of adolescents with ASD was examined and compared with their typically developing peers, so as to explore the potential factors affecting the reading performance of the group. 　　 Methods: Forty high functioning adolescents with ASD (HFA, aged 12 to 15) and forty matched typically developing (TD) counterparts (aged 12 to 15) participated in this research. There were one main study and one follow-up study. For the main study (Study One), there were three study focuses of investigation. Firstly, it was aimed at investigating the reading performance profile of the two groups (HFA vs TD) and to explore the pattern of reading deficits of students with HFA. Secondly, the EF profile of the two groups was compared to see whether distinct features of impairments were noted in the HFA group. Thirdly, from the results revealed in the profiles on reading performance and EF of the two groups, the association between the impairment of reading performance and the profile of executive dysfunctions was examined, so as to attest the proposition that deficits in EF skills played a role in reading difficulties of individuals with ASD. For the follow-up study (26 participants for the HFA group and 27 participants for the TD group), it was interested to explore the reading metacognitive awareness of the HFA and TD groups, to see whether there was a differentiated pattern on the aspect, and how it might explain the difference in reading performance of the two groups. Results: For the reading performance, the performance of the two groups was comparable in word reading, reading fluency, word knowledge as well as general knowledge, whereas participants with HFA performed significantly worse than TD peers in reading comprehension and distinct weakness was noted in the ability of inference making and generating novel ideas in the HFA group. For the ability in EF skills, participants with HFA were found to be performed poorer only in the Higher-order EF domain (i.e. self-monitoring and generativity) as compared to the TD group. In which, associations were found between reading comprehension performance and some of the EF skills, suggesting that reading comprehension performance was affected by the proficiency of specific EF skills. Moreover, the follow-up study also highlighted the difference in preference