Frontiers and Prospects of Research on Conversation Impairments on the Autistic Individuals

Abstract:
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit social communication deficits as a core characteristic. In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on their atypical conversational performance, a key aspect of social interaction. This article reviews two dimensions of conversational differences in individuals with ASD: conversational skills and conversation alignment, including the use of filled pause and backchannels, prosodic alignment, resonance, and intersubjective engagement. The article also highlights the need for future research to explore why individuals with ASD display these atypical conversational behaviors. To address this question, the authors propose two potential research directions: (1) developing conversational ability indicators to compare ASD and typically developing (TD) populations, and (2) constructing cognitive computational models of conversational performance to examine differences in cognitive mechanisms between the two groups.