Differences in Social Conversation Structure and Behaviors for Adolescents with ASD As Compared to Typically Developing Peers

Background:  Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a persistent and debilitating condition which frequently affects social ability and conversational fluency. Better understanding of areas of social deficit would be helpful to understand limitations adolescents with ASD may face when communicating with peers, especially at an age when social communication or “hanging out” becomes much more valued than the structured play typical of childhood.

Objectives:  This study examined the differences in unstructured conversations between adolescents with ASD and typically developing adolescents; specifically, conversations were coded for eye contact, words spoken, silence, questions asked, validation statements, commenting statements, topic changes, and run-on statements.

Methods:  Fifty-nine adolescents between the ages of 13- and 18-years-old completed a 5-minute unstructured conversation with a same-age peer confederate prior to participating/volunteering in a social skills intervention. Forty-seven of the adolescents (81% male, 97% Caucasian) were diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), while the remaining 12 (67% male, 92% Caucasian) were typically developing adolescents. Adolescents were screened for ASD using the parent-report of social impairment (Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition; SRS 2). Finally, five-minute conversations were coded for seconds of eye contact, number of words spoken in conversation, number of words spoken by the target adolescent, and seconds of silence. Additionally, the number of questions asked, number of validation statements, number of commenting statements, number of topic changes, and number of run-on statements made by the target adolescent were coded.

Results:  ANCOVAs were completed to compare adolescents with ASD to typically developing adolescents. Gender was included as a covariate. Seconds of eye contact (F = 5.07, p < .01), number of words spoken in conversation (F = 12.27, p < .001), number of validation statements (F = 5.18, p < .01), and number of commenting statements (F = 11.24, p < .001) were all significantly higher, while seconds of silence (F = 3.90, p < .05) was significant lower, in typically developing adolescents. Number of words spoken by the target adolescent and number of questions asked were not significantly different between groups.

Conclusions:  Although adolescents with ASD spoke as many words and asked as many questions in a conversation as typically developing adolescents, the two groups differed in other areas related to the quality of the conversation. It is important to understand problem areas in conversation and target these specific skills in treatment. These results suggests that social skills interventions should target eye contact and statements that validate or affirm a peer’s statement or provide comments on peer statements as likely modes of  improved conversation quality. Another area of focus for individuals with ASD would be to target unnatural pauses in order to increase social fluency. Understanding these differences in conversation skills may be helpful in designing more effective social skills interventions which target social communication.