Effects of Interactive Reading Interventions on Oral Communication in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: a Research Progress

Abstract

Foreign studies suggest that interactive reading is an exploratory intervention for improving the oral language skill of children with autism in their early years. We summarized and analyzed empirical studies on the effects of interactive reading interventions on oral communication skills of preschool children with autism. The results indicate that the interventions have positive impacts on vocabulary development and spontaneous responses in preschool children with autism, but have discrepant effects on their spontaneous initiations. However, due to the small sample size of these studies, the effects of interactive reading interventions on oral communication in preschoolers with autism need to be further studied. It is expected that future research will explore and verify the effects of interactive reading interventions on both spontaneous responses and initiations in large samples of autism preschoolers, and further investigate whether these effects can be maintained and generalized.

Keywords

• autistic disorder|children with autism spectrum disorders|interactive reading|intervention|oral language|child preschool