Discovering communicative competencies in a nonspeaking child with autism

This article is intended to demonstrate that adapted conversation analysis (CA) and speech act analysis (SAA) may be applied by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to (a) identify communicative competencies in nonspeaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially during particularly successful interactions, and (b) identify communicative patterns that are exhibited by interventionists and communication partners that may positively or negatively impact interactions with such children.

A case example involving an 8-year-old boy with autism and the author, an SLP, is explicated. A videotaped segment from an intervention session was transcribed and subjected to adapted forms of CA and SAA.

CA and SAA helped reveal several underlying competencies in the boy's communicative output, including an awareness of conversational structure and sequence, diversity of communicative acts, functional use of gaze and smile behavior, and the ability to spontaneously initiate interactions. Observations regarding the SLP's interactive style included the use of multiple instances of "asking" as well as multiple "derailments" of the boy's obvious communicative bids.

CA and SAA may be adapted to gain a clearer picture of what takes place during especially positive communicative interactions with nonspeaking children with ASD.