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

人类主要通过言语互动进行互动，几乎所有的互动都涉及对话轮流。不同文化之间在一位演讲者从另一位演讲者手中夺取“对话发言权”的时间以及对话回应的类型方面存在惊人的相似之处，这些类型被认为是偏离主题的。然而，有些人，特别是那些患有自闭症谱系疾病的人，在这个领域表现出了真正的困难。例如，与神经正常儿童和青少年相比，语言流利的自闭症儿童和青少年在谈话中往往反应较少，打断较多，并提供更多偏离主题的反应。这会给人留下这样的印象，即个人对其对话伙伴并不真正感兴趣，这可能会阻碍友谊的形成和维持，也是阻碍成年后面试成功的一个主要因素。当前研究的目的是调查言语流利的自闭症儿童和神经正常同龄人之间的对话反应时间是否以及如何存在差异。这需要更好地理解神经典型对话中轮流的本质。对对话轮流的研究往往集中于响应的时机或响应的“适当性”。没有研究考虑过时机和适当性如何相互关联。关于时间的研究调查了人们如何使用线索来预测他们的对话伙伴何时结束他/她的回合。这将“对话地板”描述为类似于两个网球运动员之间的集会。虽然预测显然在保持对话的流畅性方面发挥着重要作用，但“我们意向性”的贡献却被忽视了。我们意向性是两个人之间对他们正在一起从事某件事的隐含理解。也就是说，对于很大一部分会话切换来说，一个人“接管”会话地板的适当程度可能关键取决于他/她的新贡献是否“建立在”前一个会话的内容之上并发展共同构建的主题。预测和我们意向性都被认为是自闭症患者的核心问题。因此，两者都可以通过对话轮流的时间以及提供的相关对话贡献来潜在地解释自闭症困难。目前的研究将结合诱导产生、强制选择判断任务和眼球追踪来调查儿童是否以及何时做出适当的及时反应，以及在观察他人的对话时对如何发生这种反应的概念性理解。拟议的研究将进一步加深我们对人类对话轮流本质的理解。它还将使临床医生能够确定对自闭症儿童的对话干预是否应该主要关注他们对轮流的概念理解，或者他们产生（适当的）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.