Tag Archives: auditory processing

Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading

By Sara Finegan If you ask a child with autism to read a story to you, chances are that she or he will read with an almost robotic voice, word for word, with no expression.  Even an accomplished decoder will focus on getting the words right rather than the phrasing.  Good readers actually “hear” the story in [...]

Inferences: “He’s wearing a jacket so it must be his birthday”

By Sara Finegan Students on the autism spectrum don’t tend to make inferences deliberately.  It’s not that they never make them; they just aren’t aware of it and it needs to be brought to their attention before we can teach them to transfer the skill from their own lives to the written word.  It’s important [...]

The problem of the read-aloud

By Sara Finegan One of the most frequent questions I get, from special education and general education teachers alike, is how to deal with the fact that their students with autism do not pay attention during story time.  Readers with autism are generally not good listeners and often will not only fail to attend to [...]