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，几乎所有的言语互动都涉及会话的话轮转换。在不同文化中，一个说话者从另一个说话者那里获得“对话发言权”的时间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--特别是那些患有自闭症谱系障碍的人--在这一领域表现出真实的困难。例如，言语流利的自闭症儿童和青少年往往在谈话中比他们的神经正常的同龄人反应更少，打断更多，并提供更多的离题反应。这可能会给人一种印象，即个人对他们的谈话伙伴并不真正感兴趣，这可能会阻碍友谊的形成和维持，也是阻碍成年后求职面试成功的主要因素。目前的研究的目的是调查是否，以及如何，会话反应时间之间的言语流利的自闭症儿童和他们的匹配良好的神经正常的同龄人的差异。这就需要更好地理解神经型会话中话轮转换的本质。对会话话轮转换的研究往往集中在反应的时机或反应的“适当性”上。没有研究考虑到时机和适当性如何相互关联。关于时机的研究调查了人们如何使用线索来预测他们的谈话伙伴何时完成他/她的回合。这将“对话地板”描绘成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起着重要作用，但“我们意图”的贡献却被忽视了。我们意向性是两个人之间的一种隐含的理解，即他们正在一起参与某件事。也就是说，对于大部分会话切换，一个人“接管”会话发言权的适当程度可能关键取决于他/她的新贡献是否“建立在”前一轮的内容上并发展共同构建的话题。预测和我们-意向性都被认为是自闭症个体的核心问题。因此，两者都可能解释自闭症的困难与时间的会话回合，也提供了相关的会话贡献。目前的研究将结合使用诱导生产，强制选择判断任务和眼动追踪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理解这一点。这项研究将进一步加深我们对人类会话话轮转换本质的理解。它还将使临床医生能够确定自闭症儿童的对话干预是否应该主要集中在他们对话轮转换的概念理解上，或者集中在他们产生（适当）反应的能力上。

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.