Monologue to dialogue: linquisitic factors affecting the interactive conversation of young children with autism

Social communication is a primary difficulty in autism and research highlights difficulties in this area as "one of the main barriers to social acceptance” for this population (Green & Tobin, 2007:309); however, whilst researchers characterise the communication of children with autism as delayed, deviant and atypical, there is a lack of underpinning evidence for these terms presented in the literature. The current researcher advances understanding of the communicative strategies of people with autism by developing a linguistic framework and highlighting pragmatic and prosodic speech strategies that are linguistically relevant for children with autism.<br><br>Commonly, research highlights what children with autism are unable to do, for example understand metaphors (see, for example, Rundblad & Annaz, 2010).

The researcher's original contribution to knowledge is the identification of both typical and atypical functional linguistic strategies which are adopted and exploited in their communication. The present study offers, therefore, something of a corrective to those studies which focus on the absence rather than presence of targeted language behaviours. The identification of these relevant strategies can provide typical speakers with an insight into how children with autism communicate and have potential suggestions for clinical intervention.<br><br>The study’s speech data was collected at an autism-specific nursery run by the international charity, Barnardo’s, with the participation of 14 children diagnosed with autism (2;10-4;5 years).