My Child Can Read the Words… So Why Don’t They Understand What They Read?
Some children can pick up a book and read every word beautifully.
They read quickly. They rarely stumble over words. They may have even started reading very early—sometimes before anyone formally taught them how.
So when a parent hears, “Your child is struggling with reading comprehension,” the response is understandably:
“But they’re a great reader!”
This is exactly why reading comprehension difficulties can be so easy to miss, particularly in children and adolescents with autism who have very strong decoding skills.
Reading the Words and Understanding the Words Are Not the Same Thing
Reading requires more than being able to recognize and pronounce words on a page.
A successful reader must be able to decode the words AND understand the message the author is communicating.
For some children, there is a significant gap between those two abilities.
They may be able to read a paragraph aloud perfectly but struggle when you ask:
“What was that about?”
They might remember a random detail but miss the main idea. They may struggle to explain why something happened, make an inference, understand a character's perspective, figure out figurative language, or connect information across a passage.
In other words, the reading can sound great without the child fully understanding what they are reading.
What Is Hyperlexia?
Hyperlexia describes a pattern involving unusually strong or early word-reading abilities alongside difficulty with reading comprehension.
In the article Hiding in Plain Sight: Text Comprehension, Hyperlexia, and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Robertson discusses hyperlexia specifically in relation to autism.
Children with this profile may learn to read remarkably early and appear far ahead of their peers. Because they can recognize and decode words so easily, adults may understandably assume that reading has not only been learned—but mastered.
The problem is that strong decoding can mask weaknesses in comprehension.
And those weaknesses may not become obvious until years later.
Why Can This Be Missed in Elementary School?
Think about what reading looks like in the early grades.
Much of the focus is on learning letters, recognizing words, reading accurately, and developing automaticity.
A child who enters kindergarten already reading words and books may look like a reading superstar.
They may also have a strong memory for facts and perform well when questions are concrete and straightforward.
But as children get older, reading changes.
Around fourth grade, students increasingly move from learning to read to reading to learn.
Now they are expected to independently read to:
understand new vocabulary, learn information in science and social studies, determine main ideas, make inferences, understand multiple-meaning words, interpret figurative language, connect ideas, summarize information, and apply what they have read.
Suddenly, the child who appeared to be years ahead in reading may begin to struggle.
It can look like their reading skills have regressed.
But the article makes an important point: the comprehension difficulty may have been there all along. Strong decoding simply made it harder to see. robertson-2019-hiding-in-plain-…
The Reading Difficulty Was “Hiding in Plain Sight”
I love the title of this article because it describes this profile so well.
The child is reading.
They may be reading accurately and quickly.
So everyone assumes reading is a strength.
Meanwhile, subtle difficulties with comprehension can be hiding underneath that strong word reading.
Parents may start noticing things like:
“My child read the whole chapter but can't tell me what happened.”
“She remembers tiny details but misses the main idea.”
“He can answer questions when the answer is right there, but inference questions are really hard.”
“She takes everything she reads literally.”
“He has a huge vocabulary about his favorite topic but struggles with unfamiliar vocabulary.”
“She can read words that are way above grade level, but her comprehension doesn't match.”
Those observations matter.
Reading Fluency Is More Than Reading Fast
Another interesting point from the article is the difference between reading automaticity and reading fluency.
A child may read words quickly and accurately but have difficulty using appropriate phrasing, stress, and intonation.
Think about how you read this sentence:
“You did WHAT?!”
Your voice changes because you understand the meaning.
Prosody gives us clues about whether a reader is engaging with the meaning of a sentence rather than simply recognizing one word after another.
So when evaluating reading, we shouldn't only ask:
“How many words can this child read correctly?”
We also want to know:
“Do they understand what those words mean together?”
Why “Just Ask Comprehension Questions” May Not Tell Us Enough
Reading comprehension is complex.
The article explains that students with autism may sometimes perform within the average range on standardized assessments because their areas of strength can help mask underlying difficulties.
That means assessment should look beyond one comprehension score.
For example, the article discusses having a student read a passage and then retell it.
Rather than simply counting how many questions they answer correctly, we can listen to how they explain what they read.
Do they identify the main idea or give disconnected facts?
Can they organize events?
Can they explain important relationships?
Do they include irrelevant details?
Can they answer follow-up questions and expand on their ideas?
That can tell us much more about how the student is actually processing text.
Vocabulary Matters, Too
A student cannot fully understand a passage if too many of the words are unfamiliar—or if they only understand one very literal meaning of a word.
For students with the reading profile discussed in the article, vocabulary may be particularly strong around highly preferred topics while being more limited in unfamiliar areas.
Intervention may therefore need to explicitly address vocabulary development and strategies for figuring out unfamiliar words.
And this is where language and literacy become very connected.
Morphology Can Help With Comprehension
The article also highlights morphology, or understanding the meaningful parts within words.
Take the word:
unhelpful
A student can break it apart:
un + help + ful
Instead of treating unhelpful as one completely unfamiliar word, the student can use the meaningful parts to help determine what it means.
As students get older and academic vocabulary becomes more complex, understanding roots, prefixes, and suffixes can provide another tool for figuring out unfamiliar words.
What Should Reading Comprehension Intervention Actually Target?
If a child can already decode accurately, simply giving them more decoding practice doesn't address the primary difficulty.
Instead, intervention may need to explicitly teach the skills that support making meaning from text.
The article discusses strategies addressing areas such as understanding the purpose for reading, considering the author's purpose, expanding vocabulary, determining the meaning of unfamiliar words, developing morphological awareness, understanding nonliteral language, monitoring one's own comprehension, recognizing how text is organized, and making inferences.
These are skills that some students may need to be directly and intentionally taught.
Strong Decoding Doesn't Automatically Mean Strong Reading
This is one of the biggest takeaways for parents.
If your child reads words far above grade level, that is absolutely a strength.
But we shouldn't use that strength to assume that every other component of reading is equally developed.
Ultimately, the purpose of reading isn't just to say the words on the page.
It's to understand them.
And if your child can read almost anything you put in front of them but struggles to explain, infer, summarize, connect, or apply what they have read, that discrepancy deserves a closer look.
Sometimes a reading difficulty isn't obvious.
Sometimes it's hiding in plain sight.