The Contribution of Emergent Literacy Skills to the Development of Character Recognition and Oral Vocabulary Knowledge Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Case of Kindergarteners in China

Abstract Purpose The present study investigated the development of emergent literacy skills, and its contribution to promoting character and vocabulary knowledge among kindergarteners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in China. Methods Fifty-one children with ASD and fifty typically developing children were recruited and completed a series of assessments, including working memory, inhibitory control, rapid automated naming (RAN), phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, character recognition, receptive and expressive vocabulary. Results Results indicated that children with ASD had difficulties in developing phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness and oral vocabulary. However, they demonstrated comparable performance on the tasks of character recognition and RAN in comparison with typically developing children. Additionally, autism severity, nonverbal reasoning, inhibitory control, RAN, phonological awareness and orthographic awareness were significantly associated with character recognition among Chinese-speaking children with ASD. Autism severity, nonverbal reasoning, RAN, and morphological awareness were significant predictors of receptive vocabulary for children with ASD in China. Conclusion Evidence from this study provided insights of identifying possible challenges of early-developed literacy skills and highlighted the contribution of emergent literacy skills to promoting character- and word-level knowledge among children with ASD in China.