The feature of high reading ability in high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders of childhood: Analysis of the K-ABC and WISC-3rd assessment

• We examined the feature of reading ability of HFPDD children comparing non-PDD with K-ABC and WISC-3rd subtests.
• We assessed the reading ability with “Reading/Decoding” and “Reading/Understanding” subtests of the K-ABC.
• We used the other subtests for assessing other cognitive components.
• We found the reading ability of HFPDD was higher than non-PDD and differently related to other cognitive components.
• HFPDD children may read words like symbols without adapting for inferring through semantic application of the words.

We aimed to examine whether children with high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders (HFPDD) have higher reading ability and how their reading ability relates to other cognitive components. Our participants were a HFPDD group (N = 35) and a non-PDD clinical group (N = 25). We assessed reading ability with the “Reading/Decoding” and “Reading/Understanding” subtests of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) Japanese version. To investigate the relationship with other cognitive components, we calculated correlation coefficients between the each subtest and the other K-ABC and WISC-3rd subtests scores. Analysis with a general linear model revealed significantly higher standard scores on the two subtests of the HFPDD group than the non-PDD. Pearson's correlation coefficients showed different patterns between the two groups (the two subtests significantly related to “Word order” and, “Mazes” in the HFPDD group). These results suggest that HFPDD children have higher reading ability, but read words like symbols without adapting for inferring and comprehending contexts through semantic application of the words.