ERIC Number: EJ1487454
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Oct
Pages: 38
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0364-0213
EISSN: EISSN-1551-6709
Available Date: 2025-10-13
Social Context Matters for Turn-Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children
Christopher Cox1,2; Riccardo Fusaroli1,2,3; Yngwie A. Nielsen1,2; Sunghye Cho3,4; Roberta Rocca1,2; Arndis Simonsen2,5; Azia Knox6; Meg Lyons7; Mark Liberman3,4; Christopher Cieri3; Sarah Schillinger7; Amanda L. Lee7; Aili Hauptmann7; Kimberly Tena8; Christopher Chatham9; Judith S. Miller7,10,11; Juhi Pandey7,10,11; Alison S. Russell12; Robert T. Schultz7,10,11; Julia Parish-Morris7,10,11
Cognitive Science, v49 n10 e70124 2025
Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we disentangled different dimensions of turn-taking by investigating how the dynamics of child-adult interactions changed according to the activity (task-oriented vs. freer conversation) and the familiarity of the interlocutor (familiar vs. unfamiliar). Twenty-eight autistic children (16 male; M[subscript age] = 10.8 years) and 20 age-matched typically developing children (8 male; M[subscript age] = 9.6 years) participated in seven task-orientated face-to-face conversations with their caregivers (336 total conversations) and seven more telephone conversations alternately with their caregivers (144 total conversations, 60 with the typical development group) and an experimenter (191 total conversations, 112 with the autism group). By modeling inter-turn response latencies in multi-level Bayesian location-scale models, we found that inter-turn response latencies were consistent across repeated measures within social contexts, but exhibited substantial differences across social contexts. Autistic children exhibited more overlaps, produced faster response latencies and shorter pauses than typically developing children--and these group differences were stronger when conversing with the unfamiliar experimenter. Unfamiliarity also made the relation between individual differences and latencies evident: only in conversations with the experimenter were higher sociocognitive skills and lower social awareness associated with faster responses. Information flow and shared tempo were also influenced by familiarity: children adapted their response latencies to the predictability and tempo of their interlocutor's turn, but only when interacting with their caregivers and not the experimenter. These results highlight the need to construe turn-taking as a multicomponential construct that is shaped by individual differences, interpersonal dynamics, and the affordances of the context.
Descriptors: Autism Spectrum Disorders, Children, Preadolescents, Interpersonal Communication, Responses, Time, Interaction, Context Effect, Reaction Time, Individual Differences
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence; Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals; Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales; Social Responsiveness Scale
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Aarhus University; 2Interacting Minds Center, Aarhus University; 3Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania; 4Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania; 5Psychosis Research Unit, Psychiatry, Aarhus University Hospital; 6Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Delaware; 7Center for Autism Research, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; 8Carolina Autism and Neurodevelopment Research Center, University of South Carolina; 9Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd; 10Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania; 11Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; 12Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

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