MSc + PhD How children develop an understanding of conversational back-and-forth; the view from autism

人类的互动主要是通过语言互动，几乎所有的互动都涉及到对话。在不同的文化中，发言者发言的时机以及被认为是离题的对话回应的类型都有惊人的相似之处。然而，有些人——尤其是那些患有自闭症谱系疾病的人——在这方面表现出真正的困难。例如，语言流利的自闭症儿童和青少年在谈话中往往比正常的同龄人反应更少，打断更多，提供更多跑题的回答。这会给人留下这样的印象：这个人对他们的谈话对象并不真正感兴趣，这会阻碍友谊的形成和维持，也是阻碍成年后求职面试成功的一个主要因素。当前研究的目的是调查是否，以及如何，会话反应时间在语言流利的自闭症儿童和他们完全匹配的神经正常的同龄人之间有所不同。这需要我们更好地理解典型神经对话中轮流的本质。对会话转向的研究往往集中在回应的时机或回应的“适当性”上。没有研究考虑到时机和适当性是如何相互关联的。关于时间的研究调查了人们如何使用线索来预测他们的谈话对象何时会完成他/她的回合。这将“对话层”描述为两个网球运动员之间的拉力赛。虽然预测显然在保持对话流畅性方面起着重要作用，但“我们意向性”的作用却被忽视了。自意向性是指两个人之间的一种隐性理解，即他们在一起做某事。也就是说，对于很大比例的会话切换，一个人“接管”会话地板的合适程度可能关键取决于他/她的新贡献是否“建立”在前一轮的内容上，并发展共同构建的话题。预测和自意向性都被认为是自闭症个体的核心问题。因此，两者都有可能解释自闭症患者在对话转换时间和提供相关对话贡献方面的困难。目前的研究将使用引出生产，强迫选择判断任务和眼球追踪的组合来调查儿童是否以及何时及时做出适当的反应，以及在观察他人谈话时如何发生这种反应的概念理解。拟议的研究将进一步加深我们对人类对话轮流的本质的理解。它还将允许临床医生确定对自闭症儿童的谈话干预是否应该主要关注他们对轮流的概念理解，还是关注他们产生（适当）反应的能力。

Humans interact primarily through verbal interaction, almost all of which involves conversational turn-taking. There are striking similarities across cultures in the timing with which one speaker takes the 'conversational floor' from another and also regarding the types of conversational responses, which are considered to be off-topic. Yet some individuals - particularly those with Autism Spectrum Conditions - exhibit real difficulties in this domain. For example, verbally fluent autistic children and adolescents tend to respond less, interrupt more and provide more off-topic responses in conversation than their neurotypical counterparts. This can give the impression that the individual is not genuinely interested in their conversational partner, which can hinder friendship formation and maintenance and is a major factor preventing job interview success in adulthood. The aim of the current research is to investigate if, and how, conversational response timing differs between verbally fluent autistic children and their well-matched neurotypical peers. This requires a better understanding of the nature of turn-taking in neurotypical conversation. Research on conversational turn-taking has tended to focus either on the timing of a response or on the 'appropriateness' of the response. No research has considered how timing and appropriateness may be inter-related. Research on timing has investigated how people use cues to predict when their conversational partner will finish his / her turn. This depicts the 'conversational floor' as analogous to a rally between two tennis players. While prediction clearly plays an important role in maintaining the fluency of a conversation, the contribution of 'we-intentionality' has been ignored. We-intentionality is the implicit understanding between two people that they are engaging in something together. That is, for a large proportion of conversational switches, the degree to which it is appropriate for a person to 'take over' the conversational floor may crucially depend on whether his / her new contribution 'builds on' the content of the previous turn and develops the co-constructed topic. Both prediction and we-intentionality have been proposed as core problems for autistic individuals. Therefore, both could potentially account for autistic difficulties with the timing of conversational turns and also with provided relevant conversational contributions. The current research will use a combination of elicited production, forced-choice judgement tasks and eye-tracking to investigate if and when children appropriately respond in a timely manner and also the conceptual understanding of how this should occur when observing the conversations of others. The proposed research will further our understanding of the nature of human conversational turn-taking. It will also allow clinicians to determine whether conversation interventions for autistic children should primarily focus on their conceptual understanding of turn-taking, or on their ability to generate (appropriate) responses.