title: Dialogic linkage and resonance in autism.
abstract: We evaluated how children with autism make linguistic adjustments when talking with someone else. We devised two novel measures to assess (a) overall conversational linkage and (b) utterance-by-utterance resonance within dialogue between an adult and matched participants with and without autism (n = 12 per group). Participants with autism were less able to establish 'cognitive linkage' with an interlocutor. As predicted, only among children with autism was there a positive correlation between the ability to link in with speaker's meanings and ratings of emotional connectedness with the conversational partner. Participants with autism were not less likely to show a basic form of dialogic resonance across successive utterances (the 'frame grab'), but more often elaborated their responses in an atypical manner.
authors.affiliation: Adult Department, Tavistock Clinic, 120 Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BA, UK. r.hobson@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: R Peter
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Hobson
authors.forename: Jessica A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Hobson
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: García-Pérez
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Du Bois
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D013060:Speech; D055815:Young Adult