Understanding conversational reticence and verbosity in autistic children: are there specific relationships with other characteristics associated with autism?

Conversational difficulties are an important part of the diagnostic criteria for autism. However, conversational behaviours amongst autistic children are highly variable. Some can be ‘conversationally reticent’, i.e. passive (or sometimes not responding at all). Another conversational behaviour seen in certain autistic individuals is verbosity. These conversational tendencies might reflect personality traits or the same individual might veer between verbosity and reticence depending on contextual factors, such as topic interest or difficulties managing routine change (Preference for Sameness). Both communication styles have social consequences but to date have received little attention. We investigated the following with parents of 109 six to twelve-year-olds with a

confirmed autism diagnosis. Half attended special schools.

1. Do conversational styles in autistic children fall into two types, namely verbose versus reticent?

2. What other characteristics of autism influence these styles?

Factor analysis found that a model in which verbosity and reticence are treated as distinct factors gave an excellent account of the data. We also found that greater ADHD traits were consistently related to higher levels of verbosity. Preference for Sameness was consistently found not to be a significant predictor in either. Greater speech and grammatical difficulties were consistently found to predict higher levels of reticence – but were not related to verbosity. For children’s interests, findings depended on the measure used. Interest Intensity was not a significant predictor but Preoccupations was a strong predictor of both verbosity and reticence. We discuss implications for supporting autistic children to achieve their social goals.