http://readerswithautism.com/2009/09/fiction-with-a-purpose-but-one-at-a-time/
By Sara Finegan
You might have noticed that most (but not all) readers with autism prefer non-fiction to fiction.
With the exception of Bobby, all of my students on the spectrum have gravitated toward the fact-based section of our classroom library. 
Many of them become mini-encyclopedias themselves as they develop particular areas of expertise due to their highly-focussed interests. They’ll read the same books over and over (and over) again. They’ll re-read the same pages on a regular basis.
They don’t seem to have a whole lot of difficulty understanding expository text. I think I know why.
Why is non-fiction easier to understand?
First, expository text tends to have primarily literal significance. The writing is clear and straightforward, organized and efficient. There aren’t a lot of critical thinking requirements. There are just facts.
To be sure, someone who really wants to have a deep knowledge of a given topic needs to be able to connect, analyze, evaluate and synthesize the facts, and someone on the autism spectrum may not be able to do so very easily. But it is not required.
Secondly, the text doesn’t contain a lot of the features that someone with autism might find difficult. There is very little figurative language, not much in the way of emotions, and there aren’t usually characters one needs to think about in any way other than as actors in a scene. No inferences need to be made, no empathy is necessary.
The text does, however, have certain features that I think have great meaning for a reader with autism:
- The text is organized into sections in most of our non-fiction library books.
- The chapters don’t go on and on.
- There are independent passages separated by photos, topic headings, captions, etc.
- One can read just a short piece of the text and get information, make meaning.
- Reading stamina doesn’t have to be too great to perform meaningful reading tasks.
And then there’s the fact that the relationship between the reader and the text is much easier than with fiction. The reader can ask questions and get them answered without too much probing. The reader’s job is just to collect information, gather facts, and store them. This is something that many readers with autism are quite good at, and particularly enjoy.
A feeling of competence ensues when a reader with autism can navigate through this kind of text without much difficulty.
What I like about my readers with autism and their relationship to expository text is that it shows me that they very clearly understand about reading with purpose.
Having a purpose for reading is essential to comprehension.
When we read a book about Ancient Egypt, or about shellfish, we have a purpose, which is to learn about how people lived back then, or the different kinds of sea creatures that live on the ocean floor. The text is replete with facts and we know that our job is to collect them. We know, in other words, what we’re looking for. We know what questions we want answered.
It’s not that easy with fiction…
…which is why kids with autism often don’t know how to relate to that kind of text. It’s not immediately obvious what they’re supposed to be looking for, and even if they have an idea, the finding part often requires deeper thinking or more steps.
Inferring might be necessary (which is completely alien to most readers with autism) or comparing one character’s motives to another. If I wasn’t good at making inferences, or if I didn’t know why I was supposed to be reading a novel, I wouldn’t want to read fiction either.
My question is always: How do I harness the skills this reader obviously has when it comes to non-fiction and help her to use it with fiction?
The first thing is to give the reader a purpose. A job, if you will, to do while she’s reading. Something she knows how to do, not something that is alien and uncomfortable. Like…
- identifying all of the parts of the setting, or
- making a graphic organizer about the relationships between characters, or
- physical decriptions of the people in a story.
These are all parts of the story that the reader is probably going to be able to understand without having to do too much work, and since they are all about outward manifestations or connections between people, they call for literal understanding, not in-depth thinking, which we are not going to be working on just yet.
One reading “purpose” at a time
I assign the child only one type of thing to be looking for; no multi-tasking is involved.
TIP: At this point in the reader’s exploration of fiction with purpose, I am not going to give her a long story or a chapter book. In the first exercises of this nature, with these kinds of purposes, I am going to provide her with a short, one-page story with as many familiar text features as possible, including topic headings and maybe a picture or two with a caption. If this means that I need to retype a page to insert headings, I am willing to do that.
The goal is to make the fiction text look as much like non-fiction as possible from a superficial level – it’s reassuring and familiar, and eliminates a lot of anxiety for my reader.
The assignment is quick and dirty, and I expect my reader to come back to me or the classroom aide with a report fairly soon. With any luck, the child will have located the information I asked for, and can repeat it back.
Are we going to try to engage in a long conversation about it? Absolutely not. If this is a child who avoids fiction like the plague, what I am going to do is heap the praise, repeat the information back, and have the child do some sort of quick exercise with me to cement the experience. This might be dictating to me a series of key words found in the text, or doing a quick entry into a graphic organizer. Five minutes.
And then the child is sent off to do something she loves, which might be going back to the same old book about shellfish, or bouncing on a ball. Something pleasurable.
Same text, different purpose
The next time we approach the fiction work, we’re going to use the same text. But now we’re going to assign a different purpose. If the student collected data about the setting during the last read-through, now I’m going to ask her to find out what the characters look like.
Once again, the child is being given a specific purpose to find readily-located information in the fiction passage. And once again, the reporting back is going to be quick, followed by a quick recording activity and a lot of praise.
“How cool! You’re reading a fiction story! And you understand it, don’t you! I’m so proud of you. Now go take a play break.”
I may have the child read the fiction passage 3 or 4 times, each time with a different purpose. I want her to become relaxed with the text, and to experience success in making meaning of what the story is telling.
Lots of practice, short pieces
A reader with autism who is just beginning to experience success in comprehending parts of fiction stories is going to need a lot of practice with short pieces. I try to have a selection available at the child’s independent reading level or a little lower than that, even, so that we can pick and choose several to work on over a two to three week period.
I’ll write about the next steps in another week or two.
Related posts:
- Stories they help us write
- Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
- Finding the words: Helping a child with autism talk about reading
- Say what? Asking questions as one reads
- Inferences: “He’s wearing a jacket so it must be his birthday”
2 Comments
My daughter, Mimi, has a great memory and memorizes things in textbooks. She has been able to read any book (pronounce words), but lacked reading comprehension skills. Now she is in college. She gets tutoring for any English or Writing classes and math if needed. She has done very well so far. In history, music and science classes so far she does very well (without tutoring). I think it is because she has this unusual memory. I don’t know what strategies were used on her during her elementary, middle and high school years, but her reading comprehension has greatly improved, also.
I know of several teenagers who have an amazing memory that helps them in class. Some are able to memorize everything a teacher says, or memorize what they hear on books on tape. This is a great gift and I think is one of the better coping skills we encounter among readers with autism who struggle with comprehension of the written word. When they enter college and take lecture classes, they’re in heaven!
Sara
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[...] Fiction can be harder for people who tend to be more concrete in their thinking. But the more familiar you become with the imagery and the ideas, the easier fiction reading [...]