Understanding Character Perspective: Strategies to Support Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display social communication differences that may affect reading comprehension. The enjoyment of storybooks is a natural part of childhood. Students with ASD experience difficulty with understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, which may impede their comprehension of character motive in narrative text. Research-based strategies for helping students with ASD understand character perspective in narrative text, including graphic organizers, anaphoric cueing, and question-answer relationships, are described. Understanding different characters’ perspectives may help students with ASD develop reading comprehension and their overall enjoyment of narrative text.