ArticleInternational journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being2025
What do autistic children who are interested in letters and numbers do with them? A qualitative study.
Article in International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Early manifestations of unexpected bilingualism in minimally verbal autism.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- What Do We Know About the Home Literacy and Numeracy Environments of Autistic Preschoolers? A Systematic Review.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Autism-ness Does Not Exist, but Autism Does, Part 2: The Perception-Language Chimera Model Accounts for the Nature, Chronology, and Interrelation of Autistic Signs.Autism & developmental language impairmentsArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeOver a third of autistic children exhibit an intense or exclusive interest in letters and numbers at the time of diagnosis. This article aims to qualitatively investigate the atypical manifestations of this interest in autism compared to typically developing children and determine if and how it can benefit children and their families.
methodsThe participants were the parents of 138 autistic children (84% were non-speaking or minimally speaking) and 76 typically developing children ages 2-6. They were administered a questionnaire on their child's interest in letters and numbers, the manifestations of these interests, the parental attitude towards it, and the child's oral language. An inductive thematic analysis was performed on the qualitative data to establish recurring themes.
resultsEight themes were identified: atypical behaviours related to written material, emotional attachment to letters and numbers, language acquisition, use of screens, solitary behaviour, reduction of the interest over time, parental attitudes, and other special abilities.
conclusionThis study reveals that the interest in written material manifests itself in atypical ways in autism and is not comparable to the development of an interest in reading in a typically developing context. This interest also presents multiple beneficial aspects for children and their families.
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Registered trials
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