The development of contingent discourse ability in autistic children

This study investigated communicative competence in autistic children. Six autistic boys were matched to six children with Down syndrome on age and language level. For each child four samples of spontaneous speech over the course of 1 year were analysed. Child utterances were coded for adjacency, contingency and various categories of contingent discourse that either did or did not add new information. Autistic children wer found to be more non-contingent, and to show no developmental change in their contingent discourse, especially in categories of contingent discourse that added new information.