Executive Functions Drive Reading Fluency Differently in Autistic Children

Reading fluency does not fail for the same reasons in every struggling reader, according to a new study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Researchers led by Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus and Keri S. Rosch found that executive functions, the mental processes that govern attention, working memory and rapid processing, predict reading performance in distinctly different ways in children with autism spectrum disorder compared with children who have reading disability and typically developing children.

The study included 223 English-speaking children aged 8 to 12 years, divided into three groups: 35 children with autism spectrum disorder, 99 with reading disability and 89 with typical development. Each child completed measures of single-word reading fluency, pseudoword reading fluency and contextual reading fluency, along with tests of working memory using the Digit Span task and processing speed using the Coding and Symbol Search subtests. The researchers used Welch’s ANOVAs to compare the groups and linear models with Group by executive function interactions and simple slopes analyses to test whether diagnostic group moderated the relationship between executive functions and reading fluency.

The results showed that both clinical groups, the children with autism and those with reading disability, displayed lower reading fluency and weaker executive function performance than typically developing children. However, the underlying associations between executive measures and reading outcomes diverged sharply across the groups, revealing that comparable dysfluency can rest on distinct executive profiles.

Processing speed emerged as the most striking differentiator. The Coding task, which requires children to rapidly copy symbols paired with numbers, predicted single-word and pseudoword reading fluency most strongly in the autism group, with standardized coefficients of 0.40 for word fluency and 0.43 for pseudoword fluency. The same measure showed weaker associations in typically developing children and no significant prediction in children with reading disability.

Working memory also played a group-specific role. Digit Span performance predicted single-word reading fluency in children with autism and predicted pseudoword fluency in both the autism and reading disability groups.

For contextual reading fluency, the ability to read connected text smoothly, a significant Group by Symbol Search interaction emerged, with a p-value of 0.003. Symbol Search, another processing speed measure, predicted contextual fluency in children with autism with a standardized coefficient of 0.52 and in typically developing children with a coefficient of 0.29, but showed no significant association in the reading disability group.

The researchers confirmed the robustness of these findings by covarying age in sensitivity models, and the results remained unchanged.

The authors conclude that executive function and reading fluency associations were strongest and most widespread in children with autism, whereas in children with reading disability, executive measures predicted decoding-level fluency but not contextual fluency. The study supports the inclusion of executive function measures in reading assessment for children with autism and cautions against transferring reading interventions derived from research on reading disability to autistic children without adaptation.

Subject of Research: The differential role of executive functions in reading fluency among children with autism, reading difficulties and typical development.

Article Title: The Differential Role of Executive Functions in Reading Fluency in Children With Reading Difficulties, Children With Autism and Typically Developing Children

Article References: Horowitz-Kraus, T., Mostofsky, S. H., Deronda, A., Crocetti, D., Schlaggar, B. L., Farah, R., & Rosch, K. S. (2026). The Differential Role of Executive Functions in Reading Fluency in Children With Reading Difficulties, Children With Autism and Typically Developing Children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-026-07585-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10803-026-07585-w

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, reading disability, reading fluency, executive functions, processing speed, working memory, pseudoword reading, contextual reading, children, cognitive assessment, Differential, Role