Conversational factors discriminating between high-functioning autism spectrum disorders and typical development: Perceptual rating scale

Abstract

Objectives: Children with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty with social interaction and communication. Social communication difficulties among these children are evident when conversing with other people. Conversational skills play an important role in the social aspects, such as the peer relationships, and academic achievement of school-aged children. The purpose of this study was to investigate the conversational characteristics of high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD) children in terms of linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonlinguistic factors and identify the conversational factors that distinguish the HFASD group. Methods: The participants were a total of 51 children: 17 HFASD children and 34 typical development (TD) children (17 matched on the chronological age and 17 matched on the language age). The 51 conversation samples were randomly numbered according to a set proportion between the two groups. A perceptual rating scale was performed by 6 speech-language pathologies to measure the linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonlinguistic characteristics. Results: The results were the following: among linguistic factors, the HFASD group had a significantly higher inappropriate initiation and frequency of overlap compared to that of the TD group. Regarding paralinguistic factors, the HFASD group scored significantly higher in changes of intensity, pitch, and intonation compared to the TD group. Finally, in regards to the nonlinguistic factors, the HFASD group scored significantly higher in posture, expression, inappropriate gesture, and eye-contact frequency and inappropriateness. The results of discriminant analysis indicated that the topic change frequency and topic maintenance frequency were found to be the most important discriminant factors. Conclusion: We discussed the factors of conversation which distinguish the HFASD group from TD group based on these results.