Conversational topic maintenance and related cognitive abilities in autistic versus neurotypical children.

Lay abstract: Children who struggle to maintain conversation with peers often have fewer friends and lower popularity ratings, which can affect wellbeing. Verbal social communication more broadly is linked to both behavioural difficulties and emotional problems. We carried out three studies to examine children's ability to provide responses which keep a back and forth conversation going. The first study found that while autistic children had on average greater difficulties than their neurotypical peers with certain aspects of conversation topic maintenance, for other aspects the autistic group showed considerable strengths. Both studies 2 (neurotypical children) and 3 (autistic children) found relationships between, on the one hand, conversational ability, and on the other, the ability to consider another's viewpoint and the ability to maintain and update information in short term memory. We suggest support for social conversation skills should be part of mainstream classroom curricula for autistic and neurotypical children alike.