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

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 sociocognitive 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

SUBMITTER: Abbot-Smith K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11894863 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature