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Conversational topic maintenance and related cognitive abilities in autistic versus neurotypical children

Abbot-Smith, Kirsten, Matthews, Danielle, Bannard, Colin, Nice, Joshua, Malkin, Louise, Williams, David M., Hobson, William (2024) Conversational topic maintenance and related cognitive abilities in autistic versus neurotypical children. Autism, . ISSN 1362-3613. (In press) (doi:10.1177/13623613241286610) (KAR id:107156)

Abstract

Keeping a conversation going is the social glue of friendships. The DSM criteria for autism list difficulties with back-and-forth conversation but does not necessitate that all autistic children will be equally impacted. We carried out three studies (two pre-registered) with verbally-fluent school children (age 5-9 years) to investigate how autistic and neurotypical children maintain a conversation topic. We also investigated within-group relationships between conversational ability and cognitive and socio-cognitive predictors. Study 1 found autistic children were more likely than neurotypical controls to give off-topic and generic minimal responses (e.g. ‘mm’, ‘oh’) and were less likely to give non-verbal responses (e.g. nodding or use of facial affect to respond). Nonetheless, the autistic group provided topic-supporting responses 62% of the time, indicating some aspects of conversation topic maintenance are a relative strength. Studies 2 and 3 found large individual differences in topic-supporting conversational responding amongst both neurotypical and autistic children. These were positively related to theory of mind ability and age in both groups. Conversational skills lie on a continuum for the general population and differences by diagnostic group are a matter of degree. Given the importance for peer relationships, we suggest a whole-classroom approach to supporting conversation skills in all children.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/13623613241286610
Uncontrolled keywords: autism; children; conversation; pragmatics; social communication; topic; contingent; reciprocal; Theory of Mind; working memory
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology > BF41 Psychology and philosophy
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
Depositing User: Kirsten Abbot-Smith
Date Deposited: 08 Sep 2024 13:49 UTC
Last Modified: 05 Nov 2024 13:12 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/107156 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Abbot-Smith, Kirsten.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8623-0664
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Malkin, Louise.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Williams, David M..

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2973-7677
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
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