Interventions to Improve Figurative Language Understanding for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically experience a variety of difficulties throughout their years in education. One difficulty that tends to be observed in students with ASD is understanding figurative language. This difficulty is applicable to both social and academic scenarios because figurative language is often used in social situations among peers, as well as in narrative texts. The goal of the following systematic review was to identify effective intervention practices for improving the figurative language comprehension for students with ASD. This study was undertaken through a four-phase review process using the Covidence program and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) and various inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to create coding spreadsheets for the article screening processes. Only six sources were found to meet all the necessary criteria for this study. Moderately effective interventions included the three evidence-based interventions of readers theatre, story mapping, and video self-modeling (Drill & Bellini, 2022) and the thinking maps and explicit instruction intervention (Mashal & Kasirer, 2011). Highly effective interventions included the relational frame theory (RFT)-based intervention with visual aids (Lee et al., 2019); the “X is like Y” with thinking map, comparative strategy, and story matching intervention (Melogno et al., 2017); the RFT multiple exemplar training with and without visual aids (Persicke et al., 2012); and the contextual instruction and worksheet visual aids intervention (Whyte et al., 2013). Additional research needs to be conducted to augment the current studies.