Conversational turn-taking in autism spectrum disorder

Objective: Every-day social interactions, such as conversations, are characterized by turn-taking, i.e. by the frequent switch between the role of speaker and listener. Individuals have to coordinate their actions with great precision to achieve the such smooth and rapid turn-transitions observed in naturalistic interactions. For this, participants need to predict turn completions, estimate their duration, and initiate a response well before the end of an ongoing turn. In this study we evaluate whether cognitively able autistic individuals have difficulties with a turn-ends identification task. Methods: Autistic participants and an age-, gender-, schooling- and general cognitive abilities- matched control sample listened to turns, extracted from the recordings of natural conversations, which were selected to have predictable vs. unpredictable endings.Results: Both groups responded faster for predictable turns, however, there was a main effect for group; autistic participants were significantly slower to respond overall. Conclusions: Results indicate that in ASD the linguistic and semantic prediction component seems preserved, whereas other processes, e.g. initiation of a response or precise timing might cause the delay.